IT is common practice nowadays to take a successful musical film or a drama (some with a minimum of music involved), and adapt it for the stage as a musical. A few have benefitted from the transfer, others, like Bonnie and Clyde: The Musical, have fallen by the wayside despite good reviews and audience reaction. Some like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and High Society, have come out with a tailor-made new score which failed to appeal to the fans, and only survived (and attracted far bigger audiences), when rebooted with a new production featuring the original music.

This slick and highly polished production fits into that last category. The show layed the proverbial egg when first presented to an Australian audience in Sydney’s Lyric Theatre in 2012, where it folded after only six weeks. It was another six years before director Nikoli Foster and the producers of Leicester’s Curve Theatre combined to take the same Douglas Day Stewart/ Sharleen Cooper Cohan script, re-equip it with music and songs taken from the highly successful1982 film, and turn a flop into if not into a roaring success, then at least a very acceptable piece of musical theatre, that readily appealed to fans of the film, and provided newcomers a slice of American theatrical pie, even if it was at times a little to sentimental.

The story tells us about the trials and tribulations of a group of young USA Naval recruits as they try to put their personal problems and neuroses aside and qualify as Navy pilots. Zack (Luke Baker), from a broken lower-class home, and alcoholic father Byron (Tim Rogers), not only has to battle with sadistic bullying instructor Sergeant Emil Foley (Jamal Crawford), but also convince himself that the loving Paula (Georgia Lennon) is the genuine article. Paula has her own family problems in a distant and unresponsive father and appreciation of the many sacrifices her mother Esther (Melanie Masson) has made to give her a level playing field from which to gain a foothold on life.

While those relationships eventually work themselves out, Sid Worley (Paul French), who, as the son of an Admiral and brother of a naval hero, should have had the easiest of paths, is unable to see through the lies spun by his self-centred girlfriend Lynette (Sinead Long), and bows out of the course and life.

These characters and the dialogue and vocal input are like Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion shying the slippers at Professor Higgins – thrown relentlessly straight at your head from the opening moment of the show right through to the almost-overpoweringly sentimental last scenes.

Some fine characters emerge along the way. Olivia Foster-Browne is a bundle of mental and physical energy as Casey, the only girl among the would-be pilots … there was not a member of the audience who was not rooting for her to pass out with honours.

Vocally and dramatically it is hard to fault this company as an ensemble group, and if the vocal arrangements and adaptation had allowed them more scope, especially by adding more light-hearted moments, it is certain that they would have enhanced even more the audiences’ understanding and enjoyment of this very American look at life in the 1980s US Navy.

GRP