Brokeback Mountain Review
As ambitious projects go this is certainly right up there. Ang Lee’s screen version of Annie Proulx’s mesmeric short story lingers long in the imagination and it’s initially difficult to conceive of a theatrical adaptation, shorn as it must be of the magnificent cinematography that distinguished the film. But what emerges here is simply a different slant on a beloved story, valid in its own right.
Our verdict
Ashley Robinson’s version at the wonderful Soho Place offers so much to enjoy. The West End’s first new theatre in fifty years, Soho has the ambience of a club or indie cinema rather than a traditional theatre and is a really exciting addition to Theatreland. The intimacy of the new auditorium is perfectly suited to the nature of the story and allows the audience to feel fully engaged throughout.
Billed here as 'a play with music,’ chief amongst these pleasures is indeed the inclusion of a country score devised by Dan Gillespie Sells and heard courtesy of Eddi Reader’s plaintive balladeer and her terrific band, performing live on-stage. Reader’s gorgeous, soulful vocals are one of the production’s real delights, the production beautifully reflecting the author’s voice, the creative team’s aim being to just ‘make her prose sing’ and this they certainly achieve with aplomb.
Tom Pye’s evocative set conjures the terrain of Brokeback Mountain as authentically as it can on stage with a real campfire and an elegiac feel of mountain isolation.
It’s staged as a memory play spanning 1963-1983 and the mature Ennis Del Mar is there from the first. He’s seen in 2013 wistfully reflecting about lost chances and the passage of time, recalling his pivotal meeting as a young cowboy with fellow ranch hand Jack Twist in the conservative Wyoming of 1963.
In an era when homosexuality was still illegal, the pair’s growing friendship and their subsequent love affair are potentially incendiary, their passionate bond keeps pulling each back inexorably towards the other, and the gregarious Jack is prepared to live in the open with his lover but is hindered by Ennis’ lack of full-time commitment and innate caution.
The lead roles are of course familiar from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaall’s luminous screen performances but West Side Story star-in-the-making Mike Faist achieves the near impossible feat of making his Jack every bit as compelling as his screen counterpart, his crackling energy, raw sensitivity and wiry magnetism a real coup for the production and one of its chief recommendations.
Fellow star Lucas Hedges struggles rather more with the challenging role of Ennis, he’s persuasively taciturn and morose but whilst his anger is palpable one can’t fully feel his character’s intensely pent-up emotion and without the camera’s helpful close-ups to compensate for it underwhelms.
This and the constant presence of Paul Hickey’s older Ennis on the fringes of most scenes sometimes prove distracting but, notwithstanding this, the poignancy of Proulx’s memorable story about missed opportunities remains intact and relevant, anchored by a truly spellbinding performance from Mike Faist.
