Dog Man: The Musical
If you don’t have kids you probably don’t know who or what Dog Man is and you probably don’t need to know who or what Dog Man is – Dog Man: The Musical is quite possibly not for you.
But in any case, it is of course an all-singing stage adpatation of Dav Pilkey’s meta graphic novels for primary schoolers, a wilfully dumb story of a police officer whose head is indeed replaced with that of a dog, making for a somwhat improbable crimefighter whose chief nemesis is Petey, a villainous cat supervillain.
It doesn’t exactly sounds like the stuff of classic musical theatre, but by all account this stage version – by Kevin Del Aguila and Brad Alexander – was a real cult treat off-Broadway and now Jen Wineman’s original US production is getting a UK premiere, as a touring production that will play a summer stint at the Southbank Centre.
As with the recent cartoon film, the plot is loosely cobbled togeter from the first three books, and concerns Dog Man’s origins, initial clashes with Peter, the arrival of Petey’ adorabel clone Lil’ Petey, and some business to do with an evil fish and some killer buildings. There are also promionet roles for George and Harold, the goofy high school kids who are the nominal authors of the Dog Man series.