Dogfight The Musical

Dogfight The Musical was a very emotional and sometimes confronting night at the theatre.

Set in San Francisco during the Vietnam War, the musical centres in on three young Marines on their last night before heading to Nam. The three B’s, Birdlace (Ryan Henderson), Borland (Matthew Giles) and Bernstein (Jed Arthur), decide to spend their last night playing a game of “Dogfight”, where the winner takes home $50.

The rules of the cruel “Dogfight” are simple, whoever can bring the ugliest girl to the party they are having at a Jazz nightclub is the winner.

Here we see the night of the Dogfight played out, with the three B’s bringing along a girl each. Boland pays a prostitute called Marcy (Briony Burnes), which is against the rules, as his date, and then the musical focuses in on Birdlace and his date, the plain diner waitress Rose Fenney (Jenna Woolley). Birdlace convices Rose to come a long as a date in the song “Come to a Party”, sung to perfection by Ryan Henderson.

Boland wins the Dogfight, after cheating with Marcy who isn’t so ugly at all. Marcy then explains the Dogfight to Rose in the number “Dogfight”, which included some terrific harmonies by both girls. After this night both Birdlace and Rose’s lives will never be the same again.

The performances of Ryan Henderson and Jenna Woolley in the two lead roles were both vocally outstanding. Henderson showed a balanced side of the enthusiastic marine who can’t wait to get to war and the macho nature around his mates, although he played the softer side to the role later in the show, when finally winning Rose’s heart. The emotion just didn’t seem to be there, though, in his last song after coming back from the war as the only survivor of the three B’s in the number “Come Back”.

Woolley excelled in all her numbers and shone in the difficult number “Nothing Short of Wonderful”. Woolley really played the ordinary girl, who wasn’t going to be taken for a ride, perfectly.

Direction by Angela Hanna seemed to be spot on in the more intimate scenes but she seemed to have pushed the “Pack mentality” of the marines too far and a lot of the group Marine scenes were over the top. The limited choreography was perfect for the period but just wasn’t executed and polished.

Musically Koren Beale’s band sounded terrific, playing the amazing score with ease. The position of the band on stage was distracting though and sometimes pulled focus off the action on stage.

BlackOut Theatre gave a solid performance of this new musical; I left becoming a big fan of the team of Pasek and Paul.

Don’t miss this production at the Lend Lease Theatre, Darling Harbour playing this weekend only.

James Russell