Dolts, Doormats and FGM: theatre to make you physically sick

Wow. What an experience. A 1991 movie named Dogfight has spawned a romantic musical. We’re in San Francisco in 1963. Eddie is a swaggering, shaven-headed Marine and Rose is a shy, awkward waitress. Come to a party, he says. She refuses, prevaricates, reconsiders, accepts. They reach the venue; he ignores her. Furtive conversations in corners and a pervasive air of mystery suggest that something is up. The party, or ‘Dogfight’, turns out to be a secret Miss Piggy contest in which a bunch of insecure soldiers award a cash prize to the creep who invites the ugliest escort. When Rose learns she’s been tricked, she asks for an explanation. ‘You were disqualified,’ shrugs Eddie. This grisly set-up occupies the first act. In act two, the loathsome skinhead attempts to win back the woman whose Cubist features he thought would win him a few bucks from his spiteful peers. Rose, rather astonishingly, gives him a second chance.

As this barmy romance developed, I suffered a series of emotional calamities. My shock turned to bemusement, then to disbelief, then to anger, then to physical nausea, then to spiritual despair, and finally to indifference. In the closing moments I even experienced a golden beam of hope that this horror show, steeped in the sexual politics of the Stone Age, was a misbegotten satire. But no, it was in earnest.

The problem with Dogfight is structural. The romantic obstacles are badly placed. In a great love story, the couple must overcome external barriers, and their dramatic struggle brings out their courage, resourcefulness and humanity. In Dogfight the obstacles are internal. They rise from the characters’ personal failings. And the dramatic struggle reveals them as a pair of freakish saddos in need of therapy.