If you were looking for an eighties film that was perfect for a stage adaptation, then you wouldn’t need to look much further than An Officer and a Gentleman, the 1982 box office hit starring Richard Gere as the underdog officer recruit that overcomes adversity and finds love along the way. The musical version is currently on a UK tour, and this week plays the New Wimbledon Theatre.
With a book by Douglas Day Stewart and Sharleen Cooper Green, this jukebox musical pretty closely follows the story of the movie. Zack Mayo has just graduated from college and enrols in Aviation Officer Candidate School, selling contraband to his fellow recruits along the way to pay for extra tuition from his new friend Sid. The pair enjoy their weekend leave and find romance with Paula and Lynette, who are well aware of the opportunities, and damage, the annual turnover of Officer recruits can have on the inhabitants of their small town.
Douglas Day Cooper is behind the original screenplay, so it’s no surprise this musical version follows that script so closely, but despite this, the musical loses much of the heart of the original. It becomes harder to root for the underdog and the romance element feels cold and formulaic, all designed to lead us up to that final moment that everyone remembers so vividly.
Fans of eighties music will be delighted though, with a string of classic hits making up the soundtrack. From Madonna to Cyndi Lauper and Europe to Loverboy there’s more than enough to keep the audience bopping along in their seats throughout. All played live, ‘St Elmo’s Fire’ closing the first act, and ‘Up Where We Belong’ in the finale are obvious crowd pleasers.
The curse of the jukebox musical is that too often songs are shoehorned into conspicuously inappropriate moments, and An Officer and a Gentleman falls foul of this on more than one occasion. Most notably after a suicide, where we are immediately taken into ‘The Final Countdown’. Some songs, such as ‘Kids in America’ are reworked to the point they are almost unrecognisable, and in the case of this Kim Wilde hit, become painful to have to listen to.
An Officer and a Gentleman would work best as a cheesy homage to the original film, but under the direction of Nikolai Foster, it takes itself very seriously. There are already too many characters, many of them not doing enough to progress the story and the principal cast find themselves having to ham everything up to try and keep the drama taut.
Another example of where the musical fails to capture the spirit of the original comes from the scene in which Zack puts his own chance of success at risk in order to support Casey Seegar (Olivia Foster-Browne) overcome the assault course wall. In the stage version, and with the stylistic approach taken, Seegar’s achievement’s are undermined by a choreography choice that insinuates she was ‘carried’ by her male colleagues.
The cast do wonderful things with what they’ve been given, and the leads; Luke Baker as Zack and Georgia Lennon as Paula, give tremendous vocal performances that soar, while Paul French and Sinead Long as Sid and Lynette make the sub-plot as compelling as the main narrative. It’s a top-class performance from Jamal Kane Crawford as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley, berating everyone in sight to break them down and build ‘em up.
Though nothing quite fits together as it should, and it’s a musical that often feels off course, the music and lead performances are enough to make An Officer and a Gentleman a worthwhile watch. The Officer recruits have a long hard slog to finally get their wings, but perhaps the audience shouldn’t have to navigate a veritable assault course of mismatched styles in order to be rewarded with that final iconic moment.
