An Officer and a Gentleman

The Alhambra

A CLASSIC big screen romance revived with Eighties power ballads? It could have been way too corny.

But this soul-stirring production, depicting the oppression and frustration of America’s working-class, offers much more than the budding relationship between trainee pilot Zack Mayo and factory girl Paula Pokrifki.

Like the much-loved 1982 film, starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger, this musical version of An Officer and a Gentleman is the gritty story of a troubled young man, scarred from a lost childhood and a brutal father, who tries to make something of himself at naval college. Along the way he discovers friendship, love and what it means to care for someone.

It's about hopes, dreams and nightmares in a military training camp, but it's also about the neighbouring coastal community. Each character is trying to escape from something - parents with high expectations, parents with low expectations, smalltown crime, growing up on the margins or the wrong side of town - and they don't all make it.

Adapted by Douglas Day Stewart, who wrote the movie screenplay based on his own experiences of military training, this is a hugely entertaining and also haunting show, thanks largely to a terrific cast and a score of 80s hits that drive the story. It's perhaps inevitable that one or two feel a bit shoe-horned in, but on the whole tracks from the likes of Blondie, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Jon Bon Jovi, work well.

If you're thinking 'feelgood Eighties mash-ups' you'd be wrong. Kim Wilde's Kids in America becomes a dark lament for a generation haunted by Vietnam, Martika's Toy Soldiers is a sobering nod to conformism and Godley and Creme's Family Man - a standout performance by Ian McIntosh - is a poignant cry for help.

The action unfolds against Michael Taylor's stark set design; steel scaffolding and video backdrops of boot camp training, military marches and the Pensacola beach.

In the film, the female roles were little more than love interest. The show puts more flesh on the bones, particularly with Paula, who's studying to be a nurse and, unlike her friend Lynette, doesn't pin all her hopes on marrying a naval officer. Paula only has to look at her lonely mother (the excellent Rachel Stanley) to see how life turns out when you fall for a trainee pilot.

At the heart of this show are the women and when we meet them they're singing It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World, working on a factory production line. It's a rage against the patriarchy at home and in the workplace in 1980s smalltown America.

West End star Emma Williams - a former pupil and now patron of Bradford’s Stage 84 - is terrific as Paula. Her spine-tingling performance of Alone, belted out like a rock star, was a showstopper. Jonny Fines, another great voice, gave a slick, impressively physical performance as Zack, while Ian McIntosh was heartbreaking as Sid. Nice performances too from Jessica Daley, who shone as Lynette, and Vanessa Fisher, who stole our hearts as Casey.

How does that line go again...Way to go, Paula!

Runs until Saturday.