Author: vanishedcity

Player Kings

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Player Kings by William Shakespeare, adapated by Robert Icke – New Wimbledon Theatre, London

Warming up for the West End, Sir Ian McKellen’s appearance as Falstaff in Robert Icke’s compressed Henry IVs created real excitement on a Wimbledon Friday night. Some actors seem fated to play the fat knight, Michael Gambon or Desmond Barritt for example, while for others, notably Antony Sher, the role comes as a surprise to both actor and audience. McKellen is in the latter category. As they await his first entrance, everyone is silently wondering whether such a lean, vulpine actor can really carry off a fat suit. Of course he can. McKellen is the UK’s greatest living actor, and his decision to take on a demanding role at a stage in his life and career when he can do what he pleases, is a gift to us all.

McKellen’s decision to work with Robert Icke is a canny one. Icke is in demand as a reimaginer of the classic, and he has taken the radical, but entirely logical, decision to combine Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 into a single play. Althought it’s the kind of thing John Barton used to get up to at the RSC, this type of heavey editing has fallen out of fashion. But anyone who has seen the two plays in full will have experienced a slump in Part 2, when repetition seems to set in. Icke’s edits strip the plays back, to largely good effect, keeping all the best bits but cutting back on scenes such as Northumberland’s follow-up rebellion, and Pistol’s lengthy rants. The downside is a four-hour running time, but the production is very well-paced and the evening speeds by, a real achievement with the first half alone 2 hours long.

Hildegard Bechtler’s set is simple – two curtains that pull across the width of the stage – but good for switching between echoing court and cosy tavern. Other than the text changes, Icke’s production is clear and direct, giving text and performers room to breathe. The exception is an amusing staging of Falstaff’s confrontation with the Lord Chief Justice (Joseph Mydell) following the Battle of Shrewsbury. Falstaff, in a wheelchair and looking like Captain Tom, is accosted at a drinks reception in his honour, from which he methodically steals all the booze. McKellen is backed by a strong cast, including the dignified Mydell. Richard Coyle’s King Henry is a troubled man who is clearly ill from the start, and knows how little he has achieved. Toheeb Jimoh is a posh boy Hal, who seems motivated by cynical self-entertainment. The play is driven by his parade of schemes to humiliate Falstaff, but we see a glimpse of his real self in his alarming intense reaction to trying on his father’s crown.

Samuel Edward-Cook makes Hotspur a shaven-headed force of nature, and then channels a similar energy as Pistol, a clever piece of double casting. Justice Shallow is delightfully played by Robin Soans, while James Garnon is both a trouble-making Worcester and Shallow’s cousin Silence, who turns out to have a remarkable drunken singing voice. Clare Perkins makes Mistress Quickly London, and very real. Annette McLaughlin’s Warwick has hints of Theresa May, Mark Monero’s Peto is a real chancer, with no choice but to live on his wits, and Geoffrey Freshwater was born to play Bardolph.

The cast is strong, and the evening is not all about Falstaff, but he provides the plays with a deep, complex centre. McKellen, in flat cap, cravat and leather jacket, is dressed for a different era, which offers a key to his interpretation. His Falstaff is a seasoned villain, used to being top of the heap – but he has become lazy and, above all, old. Falstaff is losing his powers, and as the play progresses starts to realise that he is past it, and his time is coming. Each of Hal’s humiliations, which he shrugs off to amuse his followers, cuts deeper. He keeps being found out, and his life of sitting in the pub being deferred to is coming to and end. McKellen makes it clear that Falstaff is an aristocrat slumming it, like Hal, but far past the point of return. He is vicious and doesn’t hesitate to exploit weakness, but he is also loveable and, his physical weakness – trying and failing to rise from his tavern seat, as Mistress Quickly rushes to support him – is a heart-stopping moment, as is the final rejection scene, when he choses continued self-delusion over facing the truth. Icke incorporates his death scene from Henry V, just as Orson Welles did in ‘Chimes at Midnight’, which works well.

McKellen’s performance is a triumph – both physically menacing and vulnerable, charming and nasty – a multi-layered interpretation certainly as good as anyone who has played the role in recent memory. Icke’s production doesn’t reinvent the play with the brilliance of his Hamlet, but provides much more than a vehicle for McKellen, spawning a world that allows his performance to flourish. It’s an evening to cherish.

Dear Octopus

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Photo by Marc Brenner.

Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith – National Theatre: Lyttleton, London

While ‘I Capture the Castle’ remains much-loved, Dodie Smith’s stage work is rarely revived. Emily Burns’ production at the Lyttleton demonstrates why, but also shows the value in revisiting a play that is very old-fashioned, but is also dominated by excellent parts for women. The play, set during a weekend reunion of the Randolph family for the golden wedding of Dora (Lindsay Duncan) and Charles (Malcolm Sinclair), is on many levels very uneventful. People resolve sometimes fraught relationships, with the shadow of the First World War, and the death of eldest son Peter, in the background, and the subsequent, unexplained death of Nora, one of twins. The play was written in 1938, but only the cccasional radio broadcasts hints at the war to come. It is all about personal relationships, and about social ones too – although, Smith was not really concerned with the power balance in an upper-middle class household enabled by servants.

Frankie Bradshaw’s set flies in huge chunks of wall and staircase to create hall, dining room and nursery in a house that is substantial in every respect. There are also real fire burning in grates, a very impressive effect. Also substantial is Lindsay Duncan’s performance as the matriarch, a proper tour-de-force. Early in the play, she is domineering, constantly ordering everyone off to do jobs for her, but her charm and sincerity is never in doubt either, lending full credibility to her reconciliation scenes with her daughter Cynthia, a troubled Bethan Cullinane. The cast is the show’s strongest suite, with a host of excellent performances. Malcolm Sinclair is tender, and very convincingly devoted to his wife, as Charles. However, here are no weak cast members. The ensemble relationship is what makes the show. The family relationships require a diagram to unpick, but Bessie Carter as ‘companion’ Fenny, Kate Fahy as reprobate elder aunty, Belle, Billy Howle as brother Nicholas and Amy Morgan as sister Margery are all highly watchable.

As this is Dodie Smith, there is also a clutch of clever and amusing children – three of them, played by a rotating cast of young actors. These are very demanding parts, requiring performers who can really mix it with the adults and, along with the size of the cast, presumably one of the reasons this play is rarely seen. Smith’s ability to charm, and to conjure up the kind of family which, despite their troubles, you want to be part of, is unrivalled. Her social milieu is a lost world, which dominated the inter-war stage and now often seems unrecognisable. However, ‘Dear Octopus’, despite being sometimes preachy on the subject, shows family dynamics in a way that still speaks to us. And Smith writes about women with a skill that is entirely natural, yet highly unusual. This is very much the kind of play that the National Theatre exists to re-examine – technically demanding, unfashionable, but with qualities missed before that we can now value .

Nachtland

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Angus Wright, John Heffernan and Dorothea Myer-Bennett. Photo by Ellie Kurtz.

Nachtland by Marius von Mayenberg – Young Vic, London

Translated by Maja Zade, Marius von Mayenberg’s play is a brutal satire on the hypocrisy and racism of the contemporary German middle-classes. Brother and sister Philipp (John Heffernan) and Nicola (Dorothea Myer-Bennett), who have a difficult relationship, come together to clear their recently deceased father’s house. In the attic, they find a painting, wrapped in brown paper which, on examination, appears to by Adolf Hitler. This provides a more than sufficient catalyst to strip away the pair’s principles and dignity, as they attempt to cash in.

Nachtland (an invented German word meaning something like ‘night-land’) is a broad, bitter comedy drawn with cartoonish strokes. Most of the cast have a lot of fun with their absurd characters. Myer-Bennett is extremely aggressive, particularly towards her brother, self-righteous and openly racist. Heffernan is patronising, passively aggressive, and racist in a more insidious way. The two performances complement each other very well, culminating in a jaw-dropping brother-sister masturbation scene, as their excitement about the money they can make from the painting boils over. They play off against their partners, Gunnar Cauthery as Fabian and Judith, played by Jenna Augen. The latter is Jewish, and the only remotely normal character in the play, who whips the rug from under everyone without blinking. The events take place in an aging house, set designed by Anna Fleische, where the past has clearly been shoved in the attic and left unexamined for too long.

The absurdity of Nachtland, managed beautifully by director Patrick Marber, is its strength. Jane Horrocks is restrained, and funnier because of it, as Hitler art expert Annamaria. Angus Wright puts in the most eye-catching performance as wealthy Hitler collector, Kahl. First appearing in a cut scene, dancing to techo in a jockstrap, he re-emerges in furs and coloured chinos to appraise the painting for sale. Wright rings every drop of potential out of Kahl’s quivering ecstasy at the sight of a ‘Hitler’, but also delivers the collector’s dismissal of morality and art with fine disdain, launching into a list of those we prefer to forget were anti-semitic.

It is a little hard to judge Nachtland from outside Germany. Its satire, which feels unrestrained and to some extent shocking, is clearly aimed at Germans themselves. Whether this is familiar territory, or an essential reality check is not obvious to us in the UK. The play is too obvious at times in its humour, and struggles to get off the ground until Wright’s entrance. Von Mayenburg also gives the Devil, in a long tradition, the best lines. But it an entertaining and disconcerting evening in equal parts, with some very memorable moments. And the overall suggestion, of deep-lying, unapologetic prejudice among those who should know better for all sorts of reasons, is highly disturbing and an urgent matter for the stage to address.

A Family Business

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Chris Thorpe. Photo by Andreas J Etter.

A Family Business by Chris Thorpe – Omnibus Theatre, London

The Anthropocene Era, the Age of Humans when the future of the planet is geologically determined by the actions of our species, is now widely agreed to have begun at 05:29:21 on July 16, 1945, with detonation of the first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico. Since the dawn of the nuclear era, nothing has been the same, bombs have increased in power and number. There are now around 13,000 nuclear warheads in existence, belonging to the world’s nine nuclear states, and most have the explosive power of 100 Hiroshima bombs. The nuclear threat is constant, and the consequences of any one of these bombs ever being used are dire for humanity. Can we really live indefinitely with the dull, constant background threat of annihilation?

Chris Thorpe’s new show, A Family Business, developed with Rachel Chavkin and produced by China Plate with Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, opens up discussion about a subject most prefer to not even think about. Using his trademark conversational approach, Thorpe draws the audience into his own journey of discovery which began after meeting a woman working for International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, ICAN has successfully campaigned to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As a result of their actions, a coalition of countries from the Global South has united to deliver an international agreement that makes nuclear weapons illegal. The downside: no nuclear state has signed up.

By focusing on current, and in many ways successful, anti-nuclear action, Thorpe centres his piece on hope for change. His narrative sections are woven together with a dramatisation of the negotiations – bribery, threats, and coded discussions about nations that take place behind the scenes of international agreements. Three performers, Andrea Quirbach as the lead ICAN negotiator, Greg Barnett as the representative of a US-style power, and Efé Agwele from an African nation, talk behind the scenes. From a personal perspective, none supports the existence of nuclear weapons, but as diplomats their views are neither here nor there. They play the game that keeps the nuclear status quo intact, as though humanity were not ultimately a single family.

It is a good thing Thorpe has identified hope about the despair, because the show pulls no punches on the consequences and probability – certainty even – that nuclear war will one day take place, through accident or design. Thorpe draws the audience into cheerful conversation that reveals our general lack of knowledge about the greatest threat to our existence. He uses a web simulator to show how little of our world would remain if anyone ever pressed the button. A Family Business is engagingly performed, and directed by Claire O’Reilly, under a swag of cables designed by Eleanor Field. The show would benefit from editing in places, as the diplomatic drama has a tendency to drift. However, Quirbach, Agwele and Barnett all give nuanced, believable performances as ordinary people grappling with astonishingly high stakes. But, as Thorpe points out, the only places anything ever changes is in rooms of ordinary people, talking. His show is urgent theatre, engaging with something so big that no-one knows where to start. By bringing this discussion to the stage, he makes a powerful case for looking the threat in the face, rather than hiding our heads in the sand.

King Lear

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Clarke Peters and Danny Sapani. Photo by Marc Brennan.

King Lear by William Shakespeare – Almeida Theatre, London

Yaël Farber’s directs King Lear on simple but very effective set by Merle Hensel – a round, black circle backed by a curtain of chains. With dramatic lighting by Lee Curran, it is the perfect space for a hard-edged, menacing production that brings out the violence that courses through the play. Danny Sapani’s Lead is a big, intimidating man. His anger cows those around him, and he rules through physical presence. But Farber suggests that this is also the basis of his relationship with his daughters. For the first time I saw Lear’s actions as those of an abuser: controlling, threatening and micro-managing his children’s lives. The opening scene leaves the impression that Goneril (Akiya Henry) and Regan (Faith Omole) are equally uncomfortably with their father’s egotistical antics, but it is Cordelia (Gloria Obianyo) who has been driven to the point of resistance. Later, in a supremely uncomfortable moment, Sapani forces Regan, his adult daughter, to sit on his knee in front of her husband. Whatever has happened before the play begins, the father-daughter relationship is undoubtedly dark and destructive.

The violence Lear demonstrates when he still has power – smashing news conference microphones to ground in his rage – is visited on him in turn by children brought up in his image. Henry and Omole are superb are Goneril and Regan, taking destruction of others and themselves as the only way out of the situation they can imagine. Obianyo’s Cordelia is detached and angry, her recourse to violence taking the form of a full-scale invasion with a foreign power’s army, which makes her embrace of love and forgiveness all the more dramatic and moving when it comes. It is impossible to sympathise with Sapani’s Lear in the first half, as he rages in the heath scene, but his transformation, which comes only through the complete disintegration of his ego, is startling. His Lear is entirely compelling, and he is a huge stage presence, an actor coming to the part as though made for it.

Farber production is both well-paced – 3 and a half hours feel like much less – and well cast. Michael Gould’s Gloucester is a reasonable man in a mad world, and his scenes with Lear are a high point. Matthew Tennyson’s Edgar is an ingenue from another world, much more at home as Poor Tom than himself. Fra Fee’s Northern Irish Edmund is the opposite – a lifelong charmer whose over-confidence will always be his downfall. Alec Newman’s Kent, likewise, channels his inner, fight squaddie with suspicious ease. Hugo Bolton’s uptight Oswald and Edward Davis’ louche Cornwall are also highly watchable.

The most controversial element of the show is Clarke Peters’ Fool, played as a manifestation of Lear’s inner voice, who no-one else can see. While theoretically interesting, this approach tends to sterilise the action by removing social context, and Peters’ style seems to belong to a different production. His singing talent is put to good use though, and the use of music, composed by Matthew Perryman and making use of an on-stage piano and repeated snatches of ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’, is seriously eerie. This Lear is of the highest class, and brings new insight to one of the world’s most pored-over plays.

Macbeth

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Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma. Photo by Matt Humphrey.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare – Dock X, London

Simon Godwin’s production of Macbeth, starring Ralph Fiennes, touring non-traditional venues, is reminiscent of the Almeida’s double-header of Richard II and Coriolanus, staged in the pre-conversion Gainsborough Studios, with Fiennes playing both leads. That was in 2000, and Fiennes is still bringing in the crowds, burnishing his reputation as one of the great actors of his generation. This record includes, but does not depend upon, his Shakespearian work, with Mark Antony in both Antony & Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, Richard III, and Coriolanus (in the 2011 film) all performances of the highest calibre. His Macbeth is another major achievement, a portrayal that offers a persuasive account of a man veering rapidly into evil.

The show’s London venue is the Surrey Quays warehouse, Dock X, which provides a very successful auditorium with a large capacity, but excellent sight lines all the way to the back row. There is a gesture at immersiveness, with the audience entering through a miniature war zone with burned out car, but the production is surprisingly traditional in the right ways. Frankie Bradshaw’s concrete stepped set is simple but entirely effective, adapting with minimal fuss while creating the impression of Scotland as a militarised landscape. Soldiers wear battle fatigues so, when different costumes appear, they make a big visual impression: Lady Macbeth in a vivid green gown, Macbeth in a purple robe. The witches hover between ordinary and scary, three young women in dungarees and puffa jackets who might be hanging around on any street corner – a strong approach that normalises the extreme.

Fiennes himself is evidently an efficient soldier partly because he is single-minded to the point of lacking social skills. He is awkward and abrupt in the opening scenes, while Indira Varma plays Lady Macbeth as an influencer, who knows how to present people in their best light. It makes sense that these two are together, and that Lady Macbeth is in control. She can shape and direct her husband to make the most of his opportunities. But the production makes the tipping point clear, when her plans start to spin out of control. As soon as she tells her husband he is ‘lily-livered’, having declared that Duncan’s murder would make him a man, their pact is broken. After this betrayal, Macbeth is unleashed to live his worst life.

Godwin’s production is based around notably clear verse speaking, that makes the text sound fresh in a way that only the best productions can pull off. Fiennes leads the way in this, making all the great moments, especially the ‘brief candle’ speech, revelations. He is mesmerising, the best and most believable Macbeth I’ve had the good fortune to see, and Indira Varma is a match for his performance, making Lady Macbeth a great deal more comprehensible than is often the case, a woman who will give all in exchange for the rewards she confidently anticipates, only to disastrously miscalculated the cost.

The production also gives the wider cast weight and presence. Making the unusual, but understandable, decision to cut the Porter scene pays off through enhanced narrative drive. Another of Godwin’s achievements is to make the Macduff/Malcolm scene in England, often dismissed as an aberration, actually work. Malcolm (Ewan Black) is genuinely wrestling with self-doubt about his fitness to rule, not playing games, but it is swept away by the terrible revelation that Macduff’s (Ben Turner) family has been murdered. This moment is centre of the play’s second half, balanced against the murder of Duncan in the first, and showing how it can be played makes it complete.

A strong cast also features Steffan Rhodri as a poetically Welsh Macduff, Rebecca Scroggs as a justifiably furious Lady Macduff, and Jake Neads and Michael Hodgson as the two murderers. The ungainly presence of the latter, is used cleverly as the witches (Lucy Mangan, Daniella Fiamanya and Lola Shalam) channel their visions of the future through Hodgson’s twitching body. Christopher Shutt’s sound design creates an eerie backdrop to the action, with hints of The Exorcist that make this production not so much bewitched, as possessed. The combination of characters destroyed by their own personalities, excitingly portrayed by Fiennes and Varma, and a war-ravaged setting in which people are not what they seem, makes this a production to savour.

Double Feature

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Joanna Vanderham & Ian McNeice. Photo by Manuel Harlan.

Rowan Polonski and Jonathan Hyde. Photo by Manuel Harlan.

Double Feature by John Logan – Hampstead Theatre, London

John Logan’s new play reanimates two moments of cinema history, taking us behind the scenes to the discussions that ended careers, in very different ways. The play opens with a man in a hat and cloak sweeping, Gothically, into a comfortable cottage. It is Vincent Price (Jonathan Hyde), and he is meeting Michael Reeves (Rowon Polonski), young, brilliant and doomed film director during the shooting of Witchfinder General. Soon, we realise that this time period, 1968, is woven with another, around four years earlier. Onto the same set step Alfred Hitchcock (Ian McNeice) and Tippi Hedren (Joanna Vanderham). Now we are in Hitchcock’s cottage on the Universal lot, during the filming of ‘Marnie’. The relationships between the two pairs are very different. Hitchcock is a sexual predator, offering stardom in exchange for giving him what he wants. And he always gets what he wants. Hedren is his creation, a model he made into a film star, and she fully understands the power Hitchcock has over he. Meanwhile, Reeves has no power and can only beg Price not to walk out on his film and, it turns out, persuade him he is for real. Price looks impressive, but his performance style is hopelessly out of date and the work has dried up.

Logan has written a very enjoyable play that raises multiple questions about reputations and the way we imagine people, as well as the creative process. He also pulls off some technically demanding effects, writing scenes that overlap between the two timelines, sharing moments of dialogue. Jonathan Kent, directing, delivers a production of undeniable quality, and Anthony Ward’s hyper-realist set is richly imagined, even allowing space for Jonathan Hyde to demonstrate Price’s cooking skills by whipping up some pasta in real time.

Ultimately the success or otherwise of ‘Double Feature’ depends on the play’s overriding vision and logic, and on the performances. On the former, it does not quite deliver. It is clear that Logan is very interested in the two relationships he portrays, and in the film history around them. Hitchcock’s poisonous relationship with Hedren has only been fully revealed in the last few years, and is certainly worthy of exploration. Meanwhile, Reeves short career (he died of a drug overdose at the age of 25), and his unlikely encounter with Price, is a fascinating topic. Despite his undoubted writing skills, it is never entirely clear why Logan has chosen to interweave these two subjects, other than as contrasting examples of creative connection. Really, they seem like two short plays that could just as easily have remained separate.

However, where ‘Double Feature’ really delivers is in its cast. Admittedly, Rowon Polonski, while an excellent awkward young man in a hurry, perhaps lacks enough of the underlying darkness that is surely part of Reeves persona. However, the scene in which he persuades Price to stop hamming up his performance is a brilliant moment, as we suddenly hear the voice that makes ‘Witchfinder General’ so chilling. As Price, Jonathan Hyde is a real pleasure to watch, both flamboyant and entirely real, explaining touchingly how he wears make-up to maintain the illusion as he ages.

Joanna Vanderham is entirely convincing, both playing the role of a Hitchcock blonde, and unravelling her fears and anxieties, before finally tells Hitch what she thinks of him. And Ian McNeice is both delightful and thoroughly nasty as Hitchcock himself, obsessing over everything from oysters to luncheon meat, and gradually making his sinister side more and more apparent. By the end it is clear that Hedren’s film career is over, and she will not play another lead – and that’s the way she wants it. Meanwhile, Price will go out on a career high, having finally found a film he really wants to make. There is plenty on offer here to entertain and to inform.

Exhibitionists

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Robert Rees and Ashley D Gayle. Photo by Geraint Lewis

Exhibitionists by Shaun McKenna & Andrew Van Sickle – King’s Head Theatre, London

Exhibitionists was intended by its two writers, Shaun McKenna and Andrew van Sickle, to be a comedy in the vein of mid-20th century screwball capers, but concerned entirely with gay relationships. It revolves around five characters: two couples and a sexy, impossibly Norwegian hotel owner and chef. The latter, played by Øystein Lode, mostly provides straight-man – although not in every sense – comic relief. The two couples both combined an older and younger man. Conor (Ashley D Gayle) and Mal (Jake Mitchell-Jones), Robbie (Robert Rees) and Rayyan (Rolando Montecalvo). Visiting a gallery opening, they run into one another and Conor’s history with Robbie is revealed. Confusion ensues as couples fall apart and reform, while chasing each other around San Francisco.

The concept is promising, and there is both comic mileage and social innovation to be mined from presenting queer men in a stage setting where they are not expected. However, Exhibitionist does not deliver on this promise. The writing is not strong enough to convince the audience that either the characters or the setting are for real. Comedy only works if we believe there is jeopardy, but McKenna and van Sickle’s characters are simply walking clichés – devoted couple who can’t leave other men alone, twink, straight guy who’s discovered he’s gay, Norwegian – and nothing else. The cast work hard, but with dialogue including the line ‘Denial is a river in Egypt’, they are short of material. The art world setting at the start of the play is entirely unconvincing, with people talking about ‘video art’ as though it was a new and controversial thing. Likewise the hotel setting later on, with an unlikely room service menu that keeps getting in the way of the action and creates confusion rather than satire. Lacking a script to provide the motor, director Bronagh Lagan has too little to work with to generate a convincing farce.

Ulimately, Exhibitionists is most disappointing because it is very old-fashioned indeed. This kind of by-the-numbers stage farce died with the dodo, so it is baffling to see it resurrected in a queer context, as though that raise it from the dead.

Cowbois

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Photo by Ali Wright.

Cowbois by Charlie Josephine – Royal Court Theatre, London

Published by Plays International

Transferring from Stratford-upon-Avon, Charlie Josephine’s queer fantasy Western breezes into town in a cyclone of colour and exuberance. We are in a nowhere town, somewhere out west. All the men have left to prospect for gold and they have been gone a long time, leaving just the women and the boozed-up sheriff. When the dangerous, sharp-shooting, irresistibly hot outlaw, Jack, arrives on the run everyone gets very excited. Jack is not just any outlaw, but flamboyant, gender-fluid and irresistible. Strict school marms, farm girls, uptight bible-bashers, and respectable married women all find themselves casting social expectations aside and expressing their true selves. Then the men return. 

Cowbois is in many ways a joyful experience. The idea of using the Western genre setting to upend attitudes to gender roles is clever. Cowboy stories are packed with stereotypes, and there is satisfaction in seeing these undermined: the sheriff in a dress, a young woman shaving her head, everyone donning wildly colourful stetsons and silk outfits – triumphant costume design by Grace Smart, who also designed the neat bar-room set. Co-directed by Charlie Josephine and Sean Holmes, with movement by Jennifer Jackson, the production flows beautifully, from energetic set piece dance sequences to small, neat touches, such as Jack whisking a teaspoon from a saucer as though they are drawing a Colt.

The most enjoyable aspect of Cowbois, however, is a series of very entertaining performances. The show is expertly cast, including performers more often seen on fringe stages. Chief among these is the much-loved, under-appreciated Paul Hunter, of Told by An Idiot fame. Remarkably, he last performed with the RSC 20 years ago. His beautiful, subtle, brilliantly physical performance as the Sheriff is sheer delight. Vinnie Heaven is both super-cool and loveable as Jack. Sophie Melville’s bar-owner, Lillian, slides into an amusing sexual trance when she meets Jack. LJ Parkinson plays bounty hunter Charley with comic timing and explosive relish. And Lucy McCormick, better known for her provocative solo shows, gives the teacher, Jayne, a remarkable level of swivel-eyed mania. The evening has a cabaret atmosphere, with performers delivering turns to raucous audience approval.  

However, Cowbois also has some significant limitations. It is too long, with a first half that seems to mark time, and a sex scene between Jack and Lillian, in a pool revealed beneath the stage, that goes on for a long time. More importantly, there is a feeling that, while the show is an admirable celebration of gender difference, it does not tell us much that we do not already know. Despite aiming to undermine expectations, everything turns out the way we would expect. Baddies are baddies, and people who are good at heart come round in the end. The music also seems under-powered. The show keeps threatening to turn into a musical, but the big numbers are not there. 

The link-up between the RSC and the English Stage Company is promising. Cowbois appears to be the first Stratford production to play at the Royal Court, and suits the main stage very well. If the RSC can commission the kind of plays the Royal Court wants to stage, everyone wins. Cowbois has all the right intentions. The message that people can escape their designated roles and be what they want still needs to be shouted from the rooftops, and the RSC has a megaphone. Although flawed, Cowbois is both enjoyable and memorable, helping to give important mainstream recognition to the queer fringe performance scene.