Wendi Harriot, Melanie Masson, Georgia Lennon and Sinead Long in An Officer and a Gentleman at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London. Picture: Marc Brenner
An Officer and a Gentleman The Musical was reviewed at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London where it runs until 6 April 2024. The UK and Ireland tour continues until 9 November.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
There’s no reason why a first-rate movie shouldn’t metamorphose into a first-rate musical, particularly when a battery of the mega-hits of its era, the 1980s, are sprinkled around in it, but sadly it’s not a formula that always works and An Officer and a Gentleman, nominated for six Oscars and winner of two as a film, fails by a distance to reach those lofty heights on the stage.
It reminded me of another show that began life in Australia, Strictly Ballroom, hilarious and hugely lauded as a Baz Luhrmann film that lost its cutting edge when turned into a mainly-jukebox musical yet was popular enough because of the success of the movie to rate a UK tour. The difference was that ‘Ballroom’ made it to the West End too. If ‘Officer’, which opened in Sydney in 2012 and launched here at Leicester Curve six years later under the direction of Nikolai Foster who retains that role in the current massive 32-venue second tour, has its sights on the West End, it must take its place in the queue behind more deserving musicals.
In a coruscating two-star critique when the tour opened in Birmingham five weeks ago, Musical Theatre Review’s Rob Bartley didn’t pull his punches, concluding: “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.”
Harsh words but I couldn’t have put it better. Yet it must have improved since its faltering debut and because I found enough to admire to compensate for its shortcomings, I’m adding a star, mainly for the unflagging energy of the cast, some excellent voices and especially for the beautifully lit, almost balletic fight sequence between the tough, unbending gunnery sergeant and the most troublesome cadet at the Aviation Officer Candidate training school.
The middle-aged women who as teenagers went gooey-eyed watching Richard Gere as romantic lead Zach Mayo in the 1982 film made up a goodly percentage of the Wimbledon audience and they certainly enjoyed it, clapping along to such pop classics as ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’, ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’, ‘Material Girl’, ‘The Final Countdown’ and, of course, the No 1 chart-topper specially written for the film, the unforgettable ‘Up Where We Belong’, Oscar winner for Best Original Song, which was kept for the happy ending we all knew would happen.
When you’ve got Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Foreigner, Bon Jovi and Blondie, to name just five of the galaxy of pop legends whose hits make up the 22 that the original playwright Douglas Day Stewart, with help from Sharleen Cooper Cohen, has incorporated into his timeless storyline, what can go wrong? But the script that soared in the movie now sounds dated, stilted and sometimes cringeworthy. As an example, I’m sure “I’m gonna do the right thing, I’ll pay for the abortion”, from besotted officer-material to local girl trying to trap him into marriage, is not a line written for laughs but it gets one.
But what most jarred with me was the shouty, one-note performance of Jamal Kane Crawford as tough, no-nonsense Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley. Yes, I know he has to be loud to scare the trainees into shape but where the great (and now late) Louis Gossett Jr fine-tuned the line between professional standards and personal emotion to such a degree that he became the first African-American to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Crawford overdid it so much in Act I it left me with a thumping headache. Toning it down a bit in the superior Act II, we do finally get to see the human side of the character in the passing-out ceremony when Zach, faultlessly played and sung by Luke Bayer, and the other officers received their commission and realise Foley’s hard driving was only him doing his job.
Other highlights: Georgia Lennon’s gut-wrenching vocals on the i-Ten rock ballad ‘Alone’ as girlfriend Paula playing for keeps while Zach isn’t, Melanie Masson’s belting ‘I Am Woman’ as Paula’s strident mum, Wendi Harriott’s stormer of a ‘Kids of America’, and pretty well everything the rich-voiced Sinead Long sings as Lynette, ‘Material Girl’ especially, in the tragic secondary love story with Sid (Paul French, making the most of one of the few parts that are not one-dimensional). Big props too to Ben Cracknell’s lighting and Joanna Goodwin’s stylishly in-period choreography. But the bedroom scenes, almost erotic in the movie, seemed tame.
Not great, not bad, not good enough. But best of luck to this hard-working crew in the long, exhausting weeks ahead.
Jeremy Chapman
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