Brokeback Mountain: Proulx’s gay love story staged with more efficiency than intensity
It’s an act of some bravery to bring Brokeback Mountain to the stage. As brave as two young men falling head over heels in rural Wyoming in the 1960s? OK, not as daring as that.
Yet there was something unimprovable about Annie Proulx’s acclaimed short story of 1997, which introduced us to Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, casually employed sheep herders who succumb to the law of desire at high altitude then face a closeted 20-year aftermath to their summer of love. And Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning film of 2005 mainstreamed the tale while honouring its subtle, poetic sensuality – with Jake Gyllenhaal and gone-too-soon Heath Ledger mesmerising as rugged, coltish, wild Jack and Ennis. What can theatre hope to do?
Well, for one thing, it can override our emotional defences with music – and Dan Gillespie Sells follows up his success with Everybody’s Talking About Jamie with songs in a more introverted, wistful key. A herd of achingly lovely country ballads are shepherded into our affections by a soulful-voiced, guitar-strumming Eddi Reader and small band, set beside the stage. Pedal steel guitar strains tremble in the air, piano chords cascade like brooks, an ethereal harmonica conjures a mood of wailing longing. Beautiful.
This semi-musical approach ensures that the dialogue doesn’t become overburdened. Even so, American screen stars Mike Faist and Lucas Hedges are stepping into hard-to-fill cowboy boots. Fresh-faced Faist plays the gregarious Jack, Hedges his gruff paramour. Intimacy, by definition, is a given here, albeit evoked as if in dreamy retrospect, Paul Hickey as the forlorn, older Ennis recalling his younger self and haunting the stage.
We watch as mutual attraction kindles around the real flames of a camp-fire. Still, Jonathan Buttrell’s production (with script by Brooklyn-based Ashley Robinson) tastefully foregrounds the tenderness – kissing caresses, rather than bucking bronco behaviour. Lean torsos are revealed, but the lights are low and tent-bound/bed-bound carnality is left to our imagination.
Such understatement honours the pair’s relative innocence, and shying from explicit definitions. Even so, as things stand, this 90-minute affair privileges efficiency over intensity. Faist lights up the stage wonderfully but handsome Hedges sometimes lacks the charisma Ledger mustered at his most tight-lipped, partly because the scenes with his neglected wife (Emily Fairn’s Alma) are so truncated. I wanted to hear more from the women, glean more social context, and, just as the men crave more time with each other, dwell longer with them too. The piece packs a punch but it could and should leave you too floored to move.
Until Aug 12. Tickets: 0330 333 5963; sohoplace.org
