Dogfight, Southwark Playhouse

The movie slipped through my net, the musical comes to Europe – more specifically the Southwark Playhouse – laden with Off-Broadway awards, including the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical. You can see why. There is conspicuous talent at work in Dogfight none more so than its composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul whose work on the second season of Smash, as the sharper alternative to the “Marilyn” musical had so many of us pricking up our ears. Mine were often buzzing during Dogfight and if being influenced by the best has meant that there is a little too much redolence of Adam Guettel (to name but one) in this score – and one number “First Date, Last Night” that pretty much amounts to an hommage to Guettel – at least these guys steal classy and, hey, they go their own way enough to book their place among the gifted that I, for one, now have on alert.

Let me just say straight away that I don’t think Dogfight needs an interval and indeed the way the show builds and develops in Matt Ryan’s pitch-perfect production is so much a part of its impact that breaking its inexorable tension doesn’t do it any favours. I didn’t need that drink until the end. The story, many will recall from the River Phoenix movie – and beautifully, economically, translated to stage in Peter Duchan’s book – centres around a stark and cruel game of which marine can pull the ugliest bird the night before deployment in Vietnam. That idea in itself is so loaded with symbolism, with the portent of man’s inhumanity to man and all its inevitable damage that when two of the girls – the fake slag-for-hire and the unwitting Rose – get wise in the ladies room towards the close of act one, the stridency and venom of their duet “Dogfight” (a nifty reversal as the game switches gender) becomes a kind of paeon to disillusionment. It’s a fantastic moment and a fantastic number.

Of course, in amongst all the testosterone and bravado – and the idea that 30 days basic training can prepare young men for hell – there is the denial of innocence and just a trickle of hope. The fact that Eddie Birdlace – the excellent Jamie Muscato – recognises Rose Fenney’s quality and allows his better instincts to find expression is very moving. But he has been programmed for killing not just the enemy but his own soul and when on the eve of battle he quite literally rips up Rose’s address – as in make war not love – the holocaust which follows in this show (now a kind of latterday Hair) is the violent catalyst for the summer of love.

Laura Jane Matthewson carries the values, the decency, the hope of a generation in Dogfight and does so with affecting honesty. The country catch in her voice makes her singing so personal that her numbers really do sound like her own: the idea that “Before it’s Over” is the moment that she really gets through to Eddie – truly connects – is a real tribute to the song. Nor will anybody who sees the show be able to shuck off “Pretty Funny” as passing fancy. And let’s just say that any show which pulls out number like “Give Way” where and when and how it does has my heart.

Ultimately, love may heal in Dogfight but it’s the loss and damage that we go out humming.