THEATRE

RECOMMENDED

BY ADAM BLOODWORTH

Where was all the spine-tingling intimacy? The kissing scenes that show what two men together can be like? The caressing of a shoulder with the tuft of hair, the chin nuzzling into the armpit, the gazes of adoration?

Brokeback Mountain, originally a 1997 short story published in the New Yorker, became a big screen masterpiece in 2005 when Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal played two closeted gay lovers who worked on a ranch and fell hopelessly in love. The film retains its crown as the most prolific piece of LGBTQ cinema of the modern era. Its first ever theatre staging tackles such an intimate and profound story with mixed success.

There is much to like about director Jonathan Butterell’s vision. He has got the atmosphere absolutely right: it’s hard not to compare this stage version to the film, in which the silences speak louder than the words. In the film, the wide angle shots of the Texan ranches, beautiful in their desolation, spoke more about the isolation and removal the two men felt than they could do in a thousand words.

In-the-round at Soho Place, the stage is an ode to the film, with the recognisable shrubs and camp fire set amid the wilderness. With a live band serenading the actors, and a wonderful country music soundtrack by Dan Gillespie Sells, there are plenty of moments to lose yourself. And it’s a place we’d all like to get lost, to fall in love.

The show is powered by two compelling lead performers in Mike Faist, of Spielberg’s West Side Story, and Lucas Hedges, from Manchester by the Sea. Faist conveys an adorable, doting Jack, whose passion for Ennis, played by Hedges, pops off the stage. Hedges is brooding as the traumatised Ennis, the tragic figure who can’t quite love himself enough to let him love another man.

Given the criticisms shows like Disney’s Love, Victor have received for casting straight men in gay roles, it’s a surprise there’s been so little pick up in the media about the fact that Faist identifies as straight. Regardless of what you think about straight actors playing gay, it wasn’t this that hampered proceedings.

The duo just don’t have the right chemistry to bring the two lovers to life. Laying arm in arm, it all feels choreographed: I just didn’t buy that these two men were deeply in love. There’s a coldness to the pairing that is neither actor’s fault.

The bizarre decision to leave all the moments of passion and intimacy off stage leaves them little to work with.

The key scene in the story –in which the men first kiss, with all of its tempestuousness –isn’t shown; instead we see the outside of a tent as the two get down and dirty inside. How much we all craved to see the tantalising passions of that first kiss.