★★

“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.

COMPOSITOR E at the Omnibus Theatre

★★★

“It’s a fascinating concept – well researched and historically accurate”

Who owns our stories? And how is meaning imbued in them? Marking 400 years since the printing of Shakespeare’s first folio, Compositor E, an original story and script by Charlie Dupré, explores the collective endeavour of its publication. We get beyond Shakespeare as singular genius and instead learn, directly and indirectly, about the role of King James I in the development of Macbeth, the printer Isaac Jaggard and compositors Richard and John who arrange the type for the first folio.

It’s a fascinating concept – well researched and historically accurate. There was a real 17-year-old John Leason who started an apprenticeship with Jaggard in 1622. Scholars have dubbed him compositor e, ranked fifth compared to the other compositors due to his inaccuracy and difficulties dealing with the manuscript copy. The play opens in the midst of the printing process in Jaggard’s printing house when John Leason arrives for his first day. It’s farcical seeing Leason thrown in at the deep end by a stretched and stressed Jaggard whilst Richard Bardolph, another compositor, winds him up. Leason is a fast learner and soon gets promoted to deciphering the manuscripts into type when Richard falls ill. But Jaggard’s advice that the compositor leaves a mark goes to John’s head, and he’s left thinking about making changes to correct, in his view, the wrongs that have been done to the women in the story, drawing on the wrongs that were done to his own mother.

The piece includes high calibre performances from the three main cast members. Tré Medley as John Leason plays both the naivete and dark underlying trauma with concentrated intensity. David Monteith as Richard Bardolph brings light relief, with his evenly-paced, booming voice and physical humour; pissing into a chamber pot and spewing up on stage. Kaffe Keating, for me, is the standout of the cast, playing the busy head of the family company trying to make a name for himself in his father’s absence with maturity and depth.

“Set and costume design are beautifully interpreted”

Medley has possibly the most challenging role of the three due to his character’s flighty and inconsistent nature. He goes from inexperienced apprentice, to plotting against his boss, to then packing up to leave in unbelievably quick succession, although Medley handles these well. What can’t be made up for is a lack of exposition in terms of his motivation. It’s clear early on that something around the circumstances of his mother’s death is haunting Leason, but it’s not until the final scenes of the piece that we start to unpick what happened, and why that drives his fixation on whether the women of Macbeth are wayward or weyard. Given so much of the tension of the piece derives from this – the audience needs to know, sooner, what’s going on.

Three female cast members use stylised movement to operate the printing press and mix the ink, evoking the three witches, or wayward sisters, of Macbeth. Given the plays strong critique of the treatment of women in witch hunts under James I’s reign – it would have been appropriate for there to be more speaking female characters, rather than them being an addendum to the main action.

Set and costume design (Sophia Pardon) are beautifully interpreted. All action takes place in the workshop and so the stage is covered with ink stains on the floor, across clothes and up the papyrus-coloured walls. Words spelt out by Leason are projected onto printed sheets suspended across the stage. The closing monologue is also supported by an intricate video projection (Rachel Sampley) that adds, alongside the musical crescendo (Adam McCready), to the sense of an earth-shaking moment with the publication of the first folio.

Compositor E has an original and inspired concept, brought to life by its talented cast and creatives. More internal consistency and earlier explanation of its main character’s motives would elevate this to greater heights.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

Southwark Playhouse Elephant

★★

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

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

Southwark Playhouse Elephant

Reviewed on 10th April 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Pamela Raith

Previously reviewed at this venue:

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

COMPOSITOR E at the Omnibus Theatre

★★★

“It’s a fascinating concept – well researched and historically accurate”

“Set and costume design are beautifully interpreted”

COMPOSITOR E at the Omnibus Theatre

Reviewed on 22nd September 2023

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Dan Tsantillis

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Compositor E

Compositor E