Dog Man: The Musical
To state the obvious: if you’ve no idea who or what Dog Man is, Dog Man the Musical is probably not for you. That’s not a criticism of Dav Pilkey’s wilfully silly graphic novels for primary schoolers and it’s not a criticism of this off-Broadway originating stage adaptation. But this is not a show with a jot of interest in winning over a casual musical theatre crowd. And why would it? Pretty much every child under 12 in the entire country (plus their parents) will know what Dog Man is. That’s plenty of audience.
And indeed, part of the MO of this musical adaptation – by Kevin Del Aguila and Brad Alexander - is how it leans on the fact ticketholders will be familiar with the plot already in order to bypass the obvious budgetary pitfalls associated with staging a story that climaxes with a group of sentient buildings controlled by a psychic fish facing off against a policeman who has had his head replaced by a dog’s.
Instead Jen Wineman’s recast production smartly taps into the meta framing of the stories, which are billed as the creation of George and Harold, the highschooler heroines of Pilkey’s other famous series, Captain Underpants. (Again, if that doesn’t make sense to you, nobody is making you read this).
It’s charming and it’s done with heart
The duo are barely a presence in the actual Dog Man graphic novels, but here they’re practically the leads, with the idea being they’ve decided to stage some of their stories using junk lying around the garage. It’s a sweet...