Three sailors about to be shipped out have 24 hours of shore leave in New York. Three Marines about to be shipped out have 24 hours of shore leave in San Francisco. Women are the designated targets for all, but with a big difference.
Two musicals, two wars, with the former group headed to the battlefields of World War II in On the Town, and the second trio on its way to the early days of the Vietnam War in Dogfight. While death may await all these characters, the sailors in On the Town are a joyous lot, but the Marines of Dogfight are a gnarly bunch.
Battles were still raging when On the Town opened on Broadway in 1944, and while it was a time of rah-rah war sentiments, the musical is regularly revived with the offstage war providing hardly a ripple of worry. But invoke the Vietnam War and there is an auto-response of gathering clouds. The Marines of Dogfight have a grim sense of fun, and this is in 1963, when Vietnam was not yet a trope for senseless failure.
San Francisco Playhouse is currently presenting this uneven musical, seen off-Broadway in 2012 and based on a 1991 movie that starred River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. The musical tries to suggest a hard-bitten aura, but it can only go so far if the sweet little love story that dominates the second act has a chance to breathe. The SF Playhouse production partially succeeds in putting the material across in a way that helps make it all work.
The dogfights of the musical's title refer to a Marine tradition of contests to see who can recruit the ugliest woman to come to a party at which they will be judged on their unattractiveness. We figure out pretty quickly that Eddie, whom we first meet in a flash-forward traveling back to San Francisco after four years, is going to develop feelings for the woman he enlists as his dogfight date.
This is a tough story to musicalize, and the score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul reflects that challenge but doesn't conquer it. Musical styles are all over the place, but seldom achieve what the disparate scenes need. The tough-guy songs aren't really convincing, and the love ballads are mostly bland and end up slowing down the story rather than helping illuminate it. Peter Duchan's book has some humor amidst all the macho posturing, and there is one truly laugh-out-loud scene that seems out of place for its wit.
The performers are a gung-ho bunch, more persuasive in their acting than in singing. As Eddie, Jeffrey Brian Adams is convincingly conflicted as the jarhead with a heart, and Caitlin Brooke deftly handles the unenviable role as the woman Eddie enlists for the dogfight, but who must also radiate an overarching attractiveness. Brandon Dahlquist and Andrew Humann effectively play Eddie's buddies laden with toxic mixtures of testosterone. Amy Lizardo stands out with her comic passion as a brazen call girl enlisted as a ringer for the dogfight. In several roles, Michael Gene Sullivan displays welcome versatility.
Director Bill English's staging lacks the crispness that could help drive the material, and his set, usually a highpoint of SF Playhouse productions, is an incohesive arrangement of scaffolding, projections, a turntable, and what looks too much like a shower curtain. Already an uneasy blend, Dogfight needs to be more in step than it is here.
Dogfight will run through Nov. 7 at San Francisco Playhouse. Tickets are $20-$120. Call (415) 677-9596 or go to sfplayhouse.org.