Dogfiht, ANU Musical Theatre Company, Belconnen Community Theatre

"Dogfight" was an early work for the powerhouse team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who've since succeeded wildly both on Broadway ("Dear Evan Hansen") and in Hollywood ("La La Land", "The Greatest Showman"). For all that, it's a piece that has its natural home in a smaller theatre - the focus is mostly pretty tight on the two protagonists, with everybody else in the background. The genre is familiar stuff (three soldiers on their last day before shipping out meet up with girls for a night on the town ... it's pretty much "On the Town"!), but with a couple of harsher twists - the boys are shipping out to Vietnam, not World War 2, and the girls are being chosen as part of a "Dogfight" - the guy who brings the most "unattractive" girl wins a cash prize.

Its' a clever choice for a student musical theatre company - it has depth, it has writers with good credentials, it's got a lot of roles for a young student-aged cast. I must admit I don't entirely love the show on this presentation - Pasek and Paul's songs tend in this one to be very much of the "the idea of the song is in the title, and it repeats it as much as possible" persuasion, with not a lot of interesting development or storytelling going on within the songs. And they never entirely get past the simple problem with the scenario- you don't really want boy to get girl because boy starts as a bit of a creep and, while he attempts to reform later, he mostly ends up only as an apologetic creep rather than anyone likeable. THe musical form isn't always known for the greatest character depth, but in this case nearly everybody is written just a little too thin - the occasional character notes that spring up feel throwaway rather than anything that really shapes something rounded.

In this production, there's a couple of standout things. The best material in the show is written for the female lead, Rose, played here by an exceptional Tegan Braithwaite. Her innocent open-book attitude means she's the one character in the show who's really engaging and interesting, and she manages to make believable that Rose would return to a guy who's never really quite worthy of her. The band under musical director Jack Quail is tight and strong, delivering funky rhythms throughout. Set design by Kat Carrington is the best I've ever seen in the tricky space of the Belconnen Community theatre - it's never been my favourite Canberra performance space, but she makes the best case for it I've seen. Daisy Sibtain as Marcy is impressive in the brief moments she has material, playing sardonic and bitter as the one character who seems fully self-aware and has everybody else pegged pretty well too.

I didn't regret seeing this - it's a chance to see a show that I doubt I'll see many other places - but between only being a middling show and some less-impressive performance in the rest of the ensemble, I can't call this a complete success. But it's a nice demosntration of some of the strengths of ANU musical theatre.