Tag Archives: Pamela Raith

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

★★

Southwark Playhouse Elephant

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

Southwark Playhouse Elephant

★★

“Nick Winston’s staging is slick but lacks pace and energy”

Apparently, John Schlesinger’s 1969 American film “Midnight Cowboy” is the only X-Rated film to win the Best Picture Academy Award. Despite its bleak setting and outlook, the story of an unlikely friendship between two lost souls in New York City has been variously described as one of the greatest films of the sixties, and later deemed ‘culturally, historically and aesthetically significant’. Based on James Leo Herlihy’s novel of the same name, its success – according to the director – was largely down to its brutal exploration of loneliness. Both the film and the novel captured the quality of its time place in American cultural history.

Fast forward half a century and the ground-breaking story washes up in the hands of dramatist Bryony Lavery and songwriter Francis ‘Eg’ White who have shoehorned the bromantic fairy-tale of New York into a two-and-a-half-hour slice of musical theatre. A few years ago, we might have been more surprised, but as we have become acclimatised to outlandish choices for a musical’s subject matter, we have learnt to take this sort of thing in our stride. Claiming to be based on the novel, in reality “Midnight Cowboy – A New Musical” duplicates the film’s narrative by doing away with the central character’s back story and presenting it in disjointed flashbacks which, in this medium, get lost in the mix.

Joe Buck (Paul Jacob French) is a naïve yet damaged individual escaping his dead-end life in Texas by reinventing himself as a cowboy and heading off to New York to become a male prostitute. Success doesn’t come easy, to the point that he even pays his first client instead of the other way around. Hooking up with Rico ‘Ratso’ Rizzo (Max Bowden), he thinks his fortunes are on the rise until he discovers the rat Ratso has taken him for a ride. A mutual dependence grows, however, and after Joe moves into Ratso’s squalid squat, each individual’s isolation finds meaning and connection in a world of hustlers and ne’er-do-wells.

Nick Winston’s staging is slick but lacks pace and energy, and we never feel the full force of the unexpected chemistry between the protagonists. Despite strong performances we remain unconvinced, and neither do we feel their desperation. Similarly, Joe Buck’s encounters steer clear of gritty realism. However, whenever we are drawn in, we are suddenly denied access by a song that comes out of nowhere. Francis ‘Eg’ White has form as a songwriter, and there is no denying that there are a fair few excellent numbers, but the score is too often at odds with the text. There are exceptions. Tori Allen-Martin’s gorgeously smoky voice curls round the sultry, soul-disco chords of ‘Whatever it is You’re Doing’. We are in Serge Gainsbourg territory here, with a soft-porn gloss. Bowden’s ‘Don’t Give Up on Me Now’ has a real Tom Waits quality, reprised later by French who throws in shades of Randy Newman. Elsewhere, however, the songs tend to halt the narrative or simply cloud the intent. ‘Every Inch of this Earth is a Church’ strips away the inherent comedy of the classic scene where Joe Buck mistakes a religious fanatic for a pimp. And blow jobs and ballads have never been known to go well together.

It could be ground-breaking, and there is at times a surreal, cartoon-like quality to the show. But it cannot conceal the tameness of this interpretation. As if sensing the emotional detachment, French cranks up the passion during the closing scene, but we feel that it is unearned and inauthentic. There is poignancy in there somewhere, but like the dreams of the hapless heroes, it remains out of reach.



MIDNIGHT COWBOY

Southwark Playhouse Elephant

Reviewed on 10th April 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Pamela Raith

 


 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

WILKO | ★★★ | March 2025
SON OF A BITCH | ★★★★ | February 2025
SCISSORHANDZ | ★★★ | January 2025
CANNED GOODS | ★★★ | January 2025
THE MASSIVE TRAGEDY OF MADAME BOVARY | ★★★ | December 2024
THE HAPPIEST MAN ON EARTH | ★★★★★ | November 2024
[TITLE OF SHOW] | ★★★ | November 2024
THE UNGODLY | ★★★ | October 2024
FOREVERLAND | ★★★★ | October 2024
JULIUS CAESAR | ★★★ | September 2024

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

MURDER, SHE DIDN’T WRITE

★★★★

Duchess Theatre

MURDER, SHE DIDN’T WRITE

Duchess Theatre

★★★★

“The direction is astounding to maintain a delicate balance between a comedy and the central ‘whodunit.’”

Over 13 years since its first performance, Murder, She Didn’t Write is still touring and delighting audiences more than ever as it embarks on a UK tour in 2025. It is an intriguing spin on the classic murder mystery, a narrative framework that, despite the ‘murder,’ we feel comfortable with as we have seen it many times before.

However, it is certain that we haven’t seen this one before. Every night the stars of Degrees of Error act out a new storyline based on plot points that are yet to be determined. Agatha Crust, an obvious nod to the godmother of the genre, is our detective. She chooses one lucky audience member to perform the role of Jerkins, her assistant. From this point on, Jerkins holds the pen as they choose the setting, murder weapon, victim and murderer in this one-off recount. But don’t worry, all is not uncovered until the big reveal.

The play starts slowly as our characters are introduced and the scene is set. Credit should go to the set design (Justin Williams) for producing a backdrop that works remarkably well; however, the story unfolds. Credit should also go costume design and supervisor (Lu Herbert and Charlotte Murray). The costumes are expositions about the characters that we are watching, adding depth and reference and helping us to easily differentiate between our suspects.

The actors take a short time to work their way into the narrative. Most of the first act is about planting the seed for what is to follow. Countless random details are divulged by each of the characters. Some of these will be red herrings, others will be smoking guns. The quick wit of all the cast members is side-splitting. “Waitrose” becomes “Wait Rose!” and “synesthetic” becomes “sin aesthetic” as the audience’s suggestions and earlier events are woven into the narrative.

At times it feels like the show is starting to lose its course before Agatha regains control. The direction (Lizzy Skrzypiec, who also sometimes stars as Agatha) is astounding to maintain a delicate balance between a comedy and the central ‘whodunit.’

Agatha, on stage for the entire performance, is a comforting presence as she watches the story alongside us. It is an exceptional performance as the glue of a production that, despite the impressive improvisation of all of the cast, would possibly not function without her. Predictably, Agatha steals the show in the final chapter when she moves from narrator to detective, and explains, in front of all of the suspects, who committed the murder, just like Poirot did in Murder on the Orient Express. It is a delivery so strong that we are told not why it could be this suspect but how it must be them and could not be anyone else.

The lighting and sound (Adam King and Lucy Baker-Swinburn) are critical to the show and help to steer the plot as much as any of the characters. The choice of music (Sara Garrard) is precise, which acts as an antidote to the chaos surrounding it. The use of short scenes, some as short as 30 seconds, is effective in contributing to the rising tension in the second act, but it does feel as though the play suffers from a lack of continuity, and thus an over-reliance on our narrator.

Despite the characters knowing who the murderer is (before the audience), as we approach the crescendo, we fear that there are too many storylines still spinning, like a magician spinning too many plates. However, we see that none of these spinning plates smash as we are watching magicians on stage.



MURDER, SHE DIDN’T WRITE

Duchess Theatre

Reviewed on 24th March 2025

by Luke Goscomb

Photography by Pamela Raith

 

 

 

 


 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG | ★★★★★ | September 2024
CRUISE | ★★★★★ | May 2021

MURDER, SHE DIDN’T WRITE

MURDER, SHE DIDN’T WRITE

MURDER, SHE DIDN’T WRITE