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COWBOIS

★★★★★

Royal Court

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COWBOIS at the Royal Court

★★★★★

“The trans and queer characters are self assured heroes who inspire awe and universal swoons from cast and audience alike”

The transfer of Charlie Josephine’s Cowbois from the RSC’s base in Stratford-Upon-Avon to London has been hotly anticipated and much trailed and it’s easy to see why.

In a town 100 miles from anywhere, ostensibly on the American frontier, a group of women, children, and a perpetually drunk sheriff, have been left behind by their male townsfolk who have gone off to join the gold rush. A wood panelled bar and four leather bar stools, backed with a sign of ‘no guns, no politics’ is all that’s needed to take the audience to this familiar setting. We’re introduced to each of the women through a prolonged discussion about how the ladies take their grits, with sugar or salt, the cheeky subtext of which sets up for a fantastical journey of gender discovery ignited by the arrival of the outlaw, Jack Cannon.

Playing with the image of the American cowboy, an icon of masculinity, is nothing new. The popularity of films like Brokeback Mountain and The Power of the Dog show how exploring gender and sexuality in this repressively conservative setting works. But where Cowbois differs is in centring the voices of women and trans people in a way that’s uplifting, rather than tragic. The trans and queer characters are self assured heroes who inspire awe and universal swoons from cast and audience alike.

The infamous Jack Cannon, played with swagger and style by Vinnie Heaven, acts as a catalyst for change for all the townspeople in sometimes magical and mysterious ways. De facto leader of the group Miss Lillian, Sophie Melville, is enthralled by Cannon’s charm. Their intense sex scene is deliciously wet and wild, staged under blue light (Simeon Miller) punctuated with moans and splashes from a substage pool. Later events are unexplained and unexplainable, but that’s no bother – this is a fantasy after all.

“There’s plenty of high camp music, movement and costumes that keeps the silliness coming”

Lillian and Jack’s moments of tenderness are sweet but surpassed by those between Jack, Kid, wonderfully played by Lemuel Ariel Adou on press night, and Lucy/Lou, Lee Braithwaite, where the bandit’s arrival inspires a recognition of something in Lucy/Lou that had not before been named. A small but perfectly formed moment.

There’s plenty of high camp music (Jim Fortune), movement (Jennifer Jackson) and costumes (Grace Smart) that keeps the silliness coming. A four-piece band (musical director Gemma Storr) plays on stage throughout that could only have been improved through being more visible, rather than tucked off to the side.

The action of Act I proceeds seamlessly (co-direction Charlie Josephine and Sean Holmes). There’s broad coverage of themes from racial injustice to homophobia to trans bodies but these are all briefly danced over, with characters ready to absorb whatever is presented in front of them with childlike acceptance. This is no criticism – it’s cheering to just be absorbed in the charm and fantasy of the piece rather than having to think too deeply about injustice and inequality. But as the act comes to a close, things do feel like they are going all too well, and as the dancing spirals to a climax, low and behold the smoke clears and the long-forgotten men of the town are there in silhouette having returned to the town.

Act II brings the conflict, along with a barnstorming performance from LJ Parkinson as one-eyed Charlie, but it’s swiftly resolved. Rather than deep and brooding intellectual discussions, mostly the men just seem bemused and ready to accept the collective awakening that’s happened in their absence, before joining in for the gun slinging finale.

Cowbois is a queer western fantasy celebrating individual expression and love in all its forms. Its feminist exploration of gender identity will leave you feeling lighter and more optimistic than when you went in.


COWBOIS at the Royal Court

Reviewed on 17th January 2024

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Ali Wright

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

MATES IN CHELSEA | ★★★ | November 2023
CUCKOO | ★★½ | July 2023
BLACK SUPERHERO | ★★★★ | March 2023
FOR BLACK BOYS … | ★★★★★ | April 2022

COWBOIS

COWBOIS

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Intra Muros

Intra Muros
★

Park Theatre

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Intra Muros

Intra Muros

Park Theatre

Reviewed – 5th April 2019

★

 

“a thoroughly bland and disappointing ninety minutes”

 

The premise for Alexis Michalik’s play is a simple one: a director, an actor and a social worker go into a maximum security prison to hold a drama class for the inmates. Only two prisoners turn up. The class goes ahead anyway, and truths are revealed. It is described in the press release as ‘a captivating and darkly comic exploration of life, within the walls’, and, at a time when knife crime is on the rise in London, and just under 79,000 men are currently being held in British prisons (figure from Home Office website) this seemed like a brave and timely piece of theatre for the Park to be staging. Instead, what a thoroughly bland and disappointing ninety minutes it was.

In the programme notes, Michalik describes meeting some maximum security prisoners and how this meeting intrigued him sufficiently to lead him to write this play. One can only wish that this interest had led him to do some more thorough research. Among the more idiotic plot points of this drama was the fact that a child was conceived between a maximum security prisoner and a visitor during visiting time. As someone who has spent a great deal of time visiting prisons in the UK over the past three years, this reviewer can testify to the complete impossibility of this premise. Similarly, the idea of three lay people with little or no prison experience behind them being left alone with two violent offenders is absurd, as is the fact that the director would (a) be allowed and (b) have the utter front to ask an allegedly violent offender to re-enact the circumstances that led him to his imprisonment. There are some extraordinary companies and organisations creating drama with prisoners and ex-offenders in this country (Clean Break and Synergy Theatre Project to name two); it might have been an idea to engage with them.

The play is translated from the French, so it may well be that some of these issues are explained by cultural difference, but if you are clearly locating the action in the UK – Norwich and Durham are name-checked – this is basic stuff.

The drama opens with the director (played, with meta-theatrical symmetry, by the director, Che Walker) asking the audience directly, ‘What does theatre mean to you?’. The first audience member to answer replied ‘Storytelling’, and here, alas, this play fell short. It was impossible to understand why this story was being told, and also, particularly in the second half, it was not easy to follow such story as there was, as it was being told. Che’s director-character also made much of the power of emotion, and again, despite numerous on-stage breakdowns, the performances here, by and large, remained resolutely surface and unconnected throughout. Victor Gardener, as Angel, brought some welcome gravitas to the stage, but the characterisation in the main seemed skittish, rushed and unfocused. It takes more than a change of accent to outline a new character, and the lack of physical change in the performers from role to role was notable.

Accents that worked well were found in the sound and lighting design. Rio Kai’s double bass playing in the onstage underscore was a highlight, and David Howe provided some deft atmospheric changes with his lighting design, particularly against the back wall. Despite these efforts however, and ironically, given its meta-theatrical nature, Intra Muros remained theatrically unsatisfying, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.

 

Reviewed for thespyinthestalls.com

Photography by Edward Johnson

 


Intra Muros

Park Theatre until 4th May

 

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
A Pupil | ★★★★ | November 2018
Dialektikon | ★★★½ | December 2018
Peter Pan | ★★★★ | December 2018
Rosenbaum’s Rescue | ★★★★★ | January 2019
The Dame | ★★★★ | January 2019
Gently Down The Stream | ★★★★★ | February 2019
My Dad’s Gap Year | ★★½ | February 2019
Cry Havoc | ★★ | March 2019
The Life I Lead | ★★★ | March 2019
We’re Staying Right Here | ★★★★ | March 2019

 

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