The programme note for Doorstep Arts’ staging of Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Peter Duchan’s Dogfight, boldly claims that this production of the 2012 Broadway musical “will make you feel uncomfortable,” and on paper the synopsis promises plenty of grit. Based on the 1991 movie starring River Phoenix, Dogfight is set in San Francisco of 1963, where we meet a group of rowdy and riled up young Marines on the eve of their deployment to the simmering conflict in Southeast Asia and a little-known country called Vietnam.

Giddy with a mixture of childish excitement, too much beer and an excess of testosterone, these men barely out of their teens are gearing up for one last hurrah before they ship out. Sex, alcohol, and matching tattoos are on the menu, but before this, there’s the matter of a cruel but time-honoured rite of passage: the Dogfight. Each serviceman must select the ugliest, most repulsive date they can find, woo that unfortunate girl and bring her to be secretly judged at a party, with the most unappealing belle winning her suitor a cash prize.

It’s a promising and discursive premise, pitching questions about the shifting morality of gender stereotypes at this point in...