Southwark Playhouse announces musical Dogfight and Kushner's Bright Room Called Day

Southwark Playhouse is staging the European premiere of screen-to-stage musical Dogfight this summer.

Running from 13 August to 13 September 2014 (previews from 8 August), the musical is produced by Danielle Tarento, who was behind the WhatsOnStage Award-winning Titanic, and directed by Matt Ryan, who has worked as an associate director on Les Miserables and Miss Saigon.

Written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Dogfight is based on the 1991 movie of the same name starring River Phoenix, and Lili Taylor. It premiered Off-Broadway in 2012, winning the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical.

Set in 1963, the story centres on three young Marines who set out for a night of debauchery before their deployment to Vietnam. But when Corporal Eddie Birdlace meets Rose, the unassuming and idealistic waitress he enlists to win a cruel bet, she opens his eyes to what really matters in life.

Casting for the Southwark production, which will run in The Large, is still to be announced.

Choreography is by Lucie Pankhurst, with musical direction by George Dyer and design by Lee Newby.

Also at Southwark Playhouse, Tony Kushner‘s A Bright Room Called Day will play in The Little space from 23 July to 16 August 2014.

The play, first seen in 1987, is set in 1930s Berlin, on the eve of the rise of Nazism. Based on Brecht's The Private Life of the Master Race, it centres on a group of artists and communists who throw a decadent New Year party, blissfully unaware of the political changes to come.

Director Sebastian Harcombe's previous credits at Southwark include The Illusion (2012) and Billy Budd (2013).

Casting and further creative details for A Bright Room Called Day is still to be announced.