An Officer and a Gentleman The Musical – Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham and Touring

Picture: Marc Brenner

An Officer and a Gentleman The Musical was reviewed at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham where it runs until 2 March 2024. The UK and Ireland tour continues until 9 November.

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

A worrying trend has crept into the world of musical theatre over the last couple of decades, that of adapting an existing beloved film title and turning it into a musical.  While there are absolute successes that outshine their source material (Hairspray, Kinky Boots, Legally Blonde, Sister Act), many others have received a more lukewarm response (Pretty Woman, Ghost).  In their defence, however, their creatives at least came up with original scores to support the stories. The somewhat lazier tactic is to instead turn a famous movie into a jukebox musical, taking a string of well-known songs and splicing them into the story without much thought to narrative sense or character development.

Such is the approach to Curve’s production of An Officer and a Gentleman, which returns to UK theatres this year following its debut run in 2018. The musical adapts the 1982 romantic hit for the stage, bolstering the film’s plot with hit songs of the decade, and telling the story of young Naval recruit Zack Mayo (Luke Bayer), and his romance with Paula Pokrifki (Georgia Lennon), while at the same time trying to stay on the right side of tough sergeant Emil Foley (Jamal Crawford). Also in the mix are Mayo’s crew-mate Sid Worley (Paul French), and his feelings for Lynette Pomeroy (Sinead Long). The young women yearn for better lives while the young men have their future careers firmly in their sights, and despite wanting it all and not wanting to repeat the mistakes of their parents, the young lovers’ paths threaten to tear the couples apart.

Douglas Day Stewart’s original film screenplay is adapted by Sharleen Cooper Cohen (alongside Stewart), and while the melodramatic plot still holds up to a certain extent, the clichéd dialogue that haunts every beloved 1980s film becomes glaringly cringeworthy when delivered on a modern stage. Lack of depth in characters also becomes more obvious, and the whole production has an air of “for the sake of it” about it. The score is a collection of massive ’80s hits, ranging from Blondie and Madonna to Foreigner and Bon Jovi. They are undeniably great songs, but they’re presented as two-dimensional bolt-ons to lift the book scenes and maintain audience interest, rather than offering anything original or being genuine reasons for the characters to sing. The vocals are great, but any points for artistic creativity go to the songs themselves, not this production’s unimaginative inclusion of them.

Director Nikolai Foster has previously delivered some truly stunning productions at Leicester’s Curve, but his usual artistry and vision are lacking here, with the show feeling robotic and soulless. His last few shows have all shared a stripped-back “industrial” look, which worked for some (Billy Elliot), but the repeated approach is now starting to look formulaic and lazy. The set (Michael Taylor) is little more than scaffolding that frames the stage and a staircase that gets wheeled about, leaving great expanses of empty stage throughout the show which makes the piece look and feel thin (although lighting design by the always-excellent Ben Cracknell does compensate for this to some degree).

Some strong performances do help to elevate the show, in particular Baker as our uniformed leading man. After great work in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and Curve’s Billy Elliot, it’s wonderful seeing Baker able to show off his talents as the lead, which he does brilliantly. He looks the part, dances Joanna Goodwin’s choreography well, has a strong voice and performs with conviction. It’s a hugely physical role and Baker has clearly fully committed himself to it, and it shows. Lennon and Long are also both excellent as Paula and Lynette respectively, both getting their share of big belting moments and having strong chemistry with their leading men. Crawford also commands the stage as Foley whenever he appears and dominates every scene he’s in with a powerful presence. French is more of a mixed bag, playing it a little too laid-back in earlier scenes and appearing on autopilot, but then really coming into his own near the tail end of Sid’s journey and delivering the emotional beats as well as fantastic vocals during ‘Family Man’.

An Officer and a Gentleman takes a film written (mostly) by someone else, includes songs written by lots of someone elses, and seems to want praise for turning the patchwork into “a new musical”, when actually its individual components are far better than the ultimate whole. The story works, the songs will always be fantastic, and the cast really does put in some great performances, but unfortunately as a musical, it feels heartless and an uninspired cash-grab. It’s the sort of production that gives jukebox musicals an undeserved bad reputation, and unfortunately, you’d be better off just watching the film and then listening to ‘Now That’s What I Call The 80s’ instead.

Rob Bartley