ajhlovestheatre

COWBOIS

by Charlie Josephine

music by Jim Fortune

directed by Charlie Josephine and Sean Holmes

Royal Court Theatre, London – until 10 February 2024

https://royalcourttheatre.com

Remember the good old Wild West as depicted in the cowboy films of yesteryear? It was a world where the women were either servile and possibly repressed, or floozies, and the gun totin’, hard drinkin’ Stetson wearing men were bow legged from horse riding all day (at least, one assumes that’s why they were bow legged). All that gets turned on its head in this remarkable musical play which is as delightful as it is confrontational, repeatedly challenging one’s expectations and prejudices with a cheeky wink, a camp sashay, and lashings of rough theatre magic, sending you out dazzled, transported…and more than a little moved.

Charlie Josephine made a big splash in the summer of 2022 with I, Joan, a bold non-binary reimagining of the legend of Joan of Arc at Shakespeare’s Globe. That was a rambunctious, irreverent, imaginative piece, but this new work, co-directed by Josephine and Sean Holmes, and transferred from Stratford by the RSC for an all too brief Royal Court season, is even better. Cowbois is another show that defies both genre and gender, serving up a rollicking riff on traditional cowboy stories, enriched by a queer sensibility, terrific song and dance, a higher-than-average strike rate of authentically hilarious comedy shtick, and a gallery of magnificent, occasionally outrageous, performances.

Josephine’s characters speak in the American idiom we are familiar with from watching Westerns, but keep their British or Irish accents. Thus Sophie Melville’s bar-keep is Welsh, Bridgette Amofah’s young mum is pure London, Julian Moore-Cooke’s bewildered, unreconstructed young gold quester is Northern Irish, and so on… Far from being confusing, it actually aids in making them all more relatable, although I’m not sure the gloriously free-wheeling, deceptively ambitious text necessarily even needs that help. It reaches its hilarious apotheosis in the much-feared Mancunian One-Eyed Charley, in a mesmeric, show-stealing turn from L J Parkinson (aka LoUis CYfer).

Or at least Parkinson, striding on half way through the second act like a rhinestoned, green-maned harbinger of death with some seriously sexy dance moves, one milky eye and the comic timing of a master, would walk off with the show if everyone else wasn’t so damn good. Melville is luminous and impassioned. Lucy McCormack delivers astonishing work, her character undergoing a remarkable but credible transformation from comically uptight and judgemental to celebrating the rich diversity of humanity that doesn’t conform to preconceived norms. I defy anybody to remain unmoved by Lee Braithwaite’s Lucy becoming Lou, as they realise their true nature.

Equally moving is the love that develops between Melville’s Miss Lillian and Vinnie Heaven’s gender-exploding bandit Jack. Heaven brilliantly suggests the pain beneath Jack’s swagger, and the joy when they realise they are just as worthy of love as anybody else is palpable and infectious. Shaun Dingwall as Lillian’s bullying beau, Emma Pallant’s hilariously buttoned-up Sally Ann and Paul Hunter’s drunken sheriff are all vivid creations, but there really is no weak link in this fine company.

I suspect the moments of direct address to the audience and some of the running about worked slightly better at the RSC’s Swan, where the show premiered last year, rather than in the Court’s more traditional auditorium, but it remains vital and magical. The brilliantly controlled chaos climaxes in a shoot-out that is as exhilarating as it is funny. Josephine’s text is political but never preachy, choosing instead to seduce with heart and humour, and it’s full of delightful surprises and anachronisms. The balance between zany comedy, raw emotion and the sense of external threat, made uncomfortably vivid when the absent men return at the end of the first half to confront the joyful revelry of newly liberated women and non-binary people, is exquisitely handled. Jim Fortune’s anthemic final song brings a real lump to the throat.

This is total theatre, anarchic, sexy and life enhancing, something with the power to quicken the pulse, gladden the heart and broaden the mind. We are so lucky to have it.