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.

Vanessa Guevara-Flores. Photo by Mark Sepple.

Kin by Amit Lahav – National Theatre: Lyttleton, London

Published by Plays International

Founded in 2001, Gecko Theatre are a collective with an unmistakable style born, literally, from years of preparation. Remarkably Amit Lahav, founding artistic director and performer, spends at least three years with his performers researching, exploring ideas, and storyboarding to develop a show. The latest, Kin, was commissioned by the National Theatre and explores migration and ideas of home.

The cast of nine transform from a cohort of drunken border guards into groups seeking refuge and experiencing the fear and humiliation of rejection. Gecko perform in a style that fills a gap you never knew existed between contemporary dance and theatre. They move in highly stylized ways that are dance-based but illustrative, and always strangely compelling. The cast advance like fencers, stride in low lunges, sway together like a field of wheat in the wind, and pile themselves into a celebratory tower. They dance constantly.

Movement is at the heart of Kin, but there is language too: just not in the way we have learned to expect on stage. Characters talk constantly, but in multiple different languages from around the world. These are the mother tongues of the cast members, whose stories of immigration the show tells. They range from an escape from Yemen to Palestine in the 1930s to scenes escaping conflict and taking small boats that relate to what is going on right now around Europe. We may not speak the language, but the audience has little doubt what is happening. When a single segment of English breaks into the verbatim accounts of being a refugee, it hits hard.

Kin also has an impressive visual impact which ties its themes together. The stories spread across nearly a century, but the overall look is very Gecko, with mid-20th-century costumes (by designer Rhys Jarman) and middle European music (composed by Dave Price) – Kafka and klezmer. It translates cleverly to the large Lyttelton stage which is a dark space illuminated by pools of light, often provided in unconventional ways by lighting designer Chris Swain. At one point a family scene is entirely lit by a small television set, an electric fire, and a standard lamp, carried by characters dancing in a circle. The stage is shaped like an island, white cliffs gleaming around the edges. There are some stunning moments, including a family from India wiping their faces with clothes that turn their skin white.

While repetition is part of the point of Kin, with different generations experiencing the same discrimination, it causes some drift during the middle of the show as narrative threads become harder to distinguish. However, its emotional and political heft cannot be questioned. The final scene, in which the cast tells us who they really are, where they come from, and where they live, is a moving moment.

The issues this show examines – what happens to people caught up in circumstances outside their control who want to find a home – could not be more relevant. With political discourse on immigration in the UK more extreme than at any point in recent memory, the timing is perfect for a play about humanity and the value of human life. Both Gecko and National Theatre director Rufus Norris should be congratulated on bringing this urgent, beautiful, and devastating show to a big stage.

Photo: Marc Brenner

Cold War – book by Conor McPherson, music by Elvis Costello, based on the film by Paweł Pawlikowski – Almeida Theatre, London

Cold War, adapted from Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2018 film, is a dark story about dislocation. Wiktor and Zula leave their Polish folk singing troupe to escape the control of the 1950s Communist regime, but freedom in Paris does not solve their problems. The film, in black and white, has a charged atmosphere and air of strangeness that is sadly lacking in the Almeida’s musical version, by stellar pair Conor McPherson and Elvis Costello. Rupert Goold pulled off a triumph with Tammy Faye, by the equally exciting combination of James Graham, Jake Shears and Elton John, but Cold War does not repeat the trick. It is far too conventional a musical, taking flight when the dialogue builds tension, then dissipating it immediately with the next musical number.

The production strengths are movement, directed by Ellen Kane, and ensemble performance, with some dramatic Polish folk song and dance numbers and a wild ‘Rock Around the Clock’. Costello music sounds just like songs written for a musical, lacking distinctive character. The set by Jon Bausor – shabby piano, distressed interior – remains the same in Poland and France, from era to era, lacking any sense of place. Of the cast, Anya Chalotra as Zula has energy and strength, and Elliot Levey, always reliable, plays older impresario Kaczmarek very well. But the show takes itself very seriously indeed and, as a result, never achieves the levels of glee that made Tammy Faye a hit.

A They in a Manger by Wardrobe and Sons – Camden People’s Theatre, London

Four queer performers tie their diverse acts together with the help of a wardrobe, built by Em Tanner. A They in a Manger is appealing home-made, with the artists looking as though they’ve been rummaging through the Camden People’s Theatre dressing-up box. Anømaly pole dances in a style very much their own, blurring gender boundaries and expectations right, left and centre. They also do an excellent Grinch, Danielle James is vulnerable, funny as she challenges our assumptions in an entirely different way, and displays an impressive singing voice. Vijay Patel lip-syncs Olivia Newton-John’s Xanadu with heart and soul. And Len Blanco, drag king and, apparently, ex-member of a Welsh boy band called M4. hosts the evening with style, humour and a lot of personality. The show, directed by Frankie Thompson, is a perfect CPT alternative Christmas offering.

The House of Bernarda Alba by Federica García Lorca – National Theatre: Lyttleton, London

The titular House of Bernarda Alba, as directed by Rebecca Frecknall for the National Theatre, is laid out before us like a doll’s house with the front removed. Merle Hensel’s set exposes two floors of rooms – bedrooms where the tortured, insanely oppressed women of the house sit alone and brood, and the downstairs living room, kitchen and yard where they talk to and gradually destroy one another. The house, where Harriet Walter’s matriarch Bernarda plans to shut up her five adult daughters for a supposedly traditional eight-year mourning period, is shut off from the outside world. The only, fateful, interaction comes through illicit encouters over the high gate. Frecknall stages sone scenes as taking place simultaneously, dialogue overlapping in different parts of the house, a clever device that enhances the claustrophobia and the realism of events.

Harriet Walter’s performance is central to Lorca’s dark but fascinating play, an brutal allegory of fascism, religion and sexual oppression. Traditionally, she is a dragon but Walter plays her as a surprisingly sympathetic character. While she dominates her daughters and is violent towards them, we have the strong impression that her social conditioning has led to act this way. It is impossible to take your eyes off her as she wrestles with her family’s seething frustrations. Performances across the board are excellent. Lizzie Annis is perfect as a Martirio, boiling up just below the surface. As Magdalena, Pearl Chanda’s spirit is turning to bitterness, directed at those around her. Rosalind Eleazar as Angustia is the oldest daughter, and the most terrified that she will never marry and leave the house. As Emilia, Eliot Salt is younger, with a kindness that does not serve her well. And the doomed youngest daughter, Adela, is played by Isis Hainsworth as a very convincing teenager, thoughtless and heedless in a way everyone is at her age.

The family also includes Thusita Jayasundera as all-knowing housekeeper Poncia and Bryony Hannah as the maid, providing a commentary as household tensions built. Frecknall brings the world outside into the house in the form of stylised movement sequences involving the wordless Pepe El Romano, the external male disruptor who will tear the house apart. She also stages a shocking scene in which the reported pursuit of a local woman who has killed her baby bursts into Bernarda’s living room, as a mob seizes their quarry, like a tableau of a mythical hunt. This is a key moment in a play that is about society rather than events in a private house, and how the two are inextricably linked. Frecknall’s excellent production reveals the play’s continued power, 87 years after its author was murdered by a state he could clearly see coming for him.

Christina Kirk and Marylouise Burke. Photo by Ahron R Foster.

Infinite Life by Annie Baker – National Theatre: Dorfman, London

Following a string of remarkable shows at the National Theatre, including The Flick, John and most recently The Antipodes, Annie Baker is back as perhaps the most anticipated playwright writing today. Loungers set against a decorative cement block wall (the set designed by dots) fill up with women who are all, we discover, undergoing fasting treatment for chronic pain. We cannot see beyond the unappealing wall, but the cast gaze out towards us and a view of what they describe as a parking lot behind a bakery. If this is purgatory, and metaphorically at least it may be, it is highly unpromisin. The ordinariness of the setting is a classic Annie Baker trope, where places, events and people appear at first glance to be of little great significance but increasingly carry a strange weight. There aren’t really any conventional events, just talk, but the conversations that ensue between the characters are powerful and compelling.

The attraction of Baker’s work is her characters, who often seem almost too real in the way they speak and behave to be allowed on a stage. Ginnie (Kristine Nelson) is in charge, asking the questions of new arrival Sofie (Christina Kirk). The relationship between the women on stage is full of minor tensions, occasional squabbling and kindness. Each gradually reveals the effects, sometimes horrifying, of pain that cannot be cured. Yvette (Mia Katigbak) unrolld a deadpan list of complaints that hits a level of absurdity which is both funny and awful. We feel guilty for laughing and for doubting her account of what has happened to her, because one of the play’s themes is the invisible trauma experience by women, whose experiences of pain and much else besides are disbelieved and discounted. There is a man too, Nelson, played by Pete Simpson with perfect poise as a ridiculous yoga-trousered, open-marriaged dude. He is very funny, but his account of his health, when it comes, is perhaps the darkest and most unlikely of alll.

There is a great deal going on below the surface in Baker’s plays, which makes thinking about them afterwards a very satisfying experience. For instance, Sofie is trying to read George Eliot’s ‘Daniel Deronda’, from which she at one point she reads out a particularly dense sentence. Is the book’s plot, involving bad marriage choices and outsiders doomed to watch from the sidelines, providing commentary on her life? Christina Kirk’s performance as Sofie is exceptional. She controls the play’s progress, forwarding the action with announcements such ‘Eight hours later’. Younger than her companions, she is both poised and nervous in equal measure and extraordinarily vulnerable. Baker, who has a quiet history of identifying and busting theatrical taboos, gives her a scene which is the first I can recall to show female masturbation on stage. It forms part of her mysterious sexuality, tied up and dictated by her pain where the border between fantasy and reality has melted away.

Infinite Life is a subtle play, crossing meditations on philosophical questions of whether pain really exists if it can only be experience subjectively, with the messy realities of life in 21st century America. It is charming, funny, raunchy, cerebral, tear-inducing and strange in equal measure, directed expertly by James Macdonald. When Eileen (a wonderful performance by Baker favourite Marylouise Burke) lays her hand on Sofie’s head as she is about to leave for home, she conveys the impression that something supernatural is happening – a moment of healing. And for the audience, it really is.

Nan, me and Barbara Pravi by Hannah Maxwell – Stanley Arts, London

Hannah Maxwell’s single-handed show is a beautifully structured piece of fringe theatre, combining the personal and the confessional while making it seem new and different – quite an achievement. Maxwell is deeply charming, cultured and slightly aloof, at least at first. She is in control, and we believe her implication that she once worked for the security services – she seems like the kind of person who easily might. Of course, it is an illusion – no-one, after all, is really in control. Moving in with her grandparents in Luton to look after her dying grandfather, and then her widowed nan, has left her suspended between duty and the London life she has left behind, with its big highs and deep lows. Watching Eurovision with her nan leads a stalkerish obsession with French singer Barbara Pravin, which is both funny and believable. The show is about working these things through.

Maxwell has the audience in the palm of her hand from the start, instantly sympathetic. Crucially though, she can also surprise. Her staging is a neat balance between clever and silly, and never gratuitous – making Oat So Simple in collaboration with the audience, managing her nan’s medication via a giant pill organiser, delivering a final killer ballad in French – are cleverly judged. She plays with the contrast between her artistic life as a gay woman in London, and the suburban family background that is also part of her, whatever her instinct to deny it. She delivers a powerfully understated show about identity, happiness and the importance of connecting between generations. She also concludes that being an obsessive fan is probably not a good thing, which is good life advice for us all. Maxwell is a fringe favourite for a very good reason: she makes the complete shows that so many performers aspire to, but which are so difficult to pull off.