Brokeback Mountain, a Play with Music

 It ran from 10 May - 12 August 2023 in London's West End. I'm just coming across the pictures.

 

FROM 2023: The world premiere of Brokeback Mountain, a new play with music, written by Ashley Robinson with songs by Dan Gillespie Sells and based on Annie Proulx’s short story. Directed by Jonathan Butterell, Brokeback Mountain stars Mike Faist as Jack and Lucas Hedges as Ennis, both making their West End stage debuts. The production sees Jonathan Butterell and Dan Gillespie Sells (The Feeling), creators of the hit musical and film Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, reuniting with Producer Nica Burns.

 

Wyoming 1963: a wild landscape where people live in extreme rural poverty in tight, insular and conservative communities. When Ennis and Jack take jobs on the isolated Brokeback Mountain, all their certainties of life change forever as they flounder in unexpected emotional waters of increasing depth. Dan Gillespie Sells’ beautiful Country and Western songs weave heartbreakingly through this intense tale of an irresistible and hidden love spanning twenty years and its tragic consequences.

 

This is a play with original music by Dan Gillespie Sells, performed by the extraordinary singer, Eddi Reader, joined by her onstage Country and Western band: Sean Green (piano/Musical Director), Meelie Traill (upright bass), Greg Miller (harmonica) and BJ Cole (pedal steel guitar).

 

Annie Proulx said: “Brokeback Mountain has been recreated in several different forms, each with its own distinctive moods and impact. Ashley’s script is fresh and deeply moving, opening sight lines not visible in the original nor successive treatments.”

 

Dan Gillespie Sells’ powerful and beautiful songs, sung by “The Balladeer,” give voice to the tumultuous inner landscape of our wannabe cowboys (both young men of few words), and provide the scope of our vast and brutal outer landscape, not to mention allowing Proulx’s poetic prose to literally sing.