Southbank Centre, London
A part-canine cop, a villainous cat and a psychokinetic butterflyfish burst into song as the wildly popular children’s books are adapted for the stage
Perhaps, if you don’t have a child in primary school, you will be blissfully unaware of Dog Man, Dav Pilkey’s series of graphic novels about a cop who – after a terrible injury – has his dog’s head sewn on to his own body, thereby creating a crime-fighting canine/human crossbreed. But if you’ve been swept up by the phenomenon – and Dog Man is a phenomenon, selling more than 70m copies in the decade since the first book was published – then you will know that this mutt has some serious star power: there’s a Dog Man film, video game, board game … and now a musical, arriving in the UK after off-Broadway success.
The Dog Man books are chaotic, hilarious and full of pathos, but writer/lyricist Kevin Del Aguila and composer Brad Alexander’s show leans largely on the former. There’s slapstick humour and jokes about butt-sniffing. When Dog Man is asked how his day is going, he replies: “Ruff!” It’s aimed at the younger end of Pilkey’s readership, which is confusing as there are also Dickens references.
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