Theatre review: Brokeback Mountain

Back to @sohoplace, the theatre with a name so current it's planning on upgrading to Windows ME any day now. In what, quite frankly, I thought was going to be a bigger event among The Gays^TM than it seems to have been, the theatre stages a world premiere adaptation of Annie Proulx' Brokeback Mountain, the beloved gay cowboy story (they actually meet herding sheep, but there's no such thing as a sheepboy hat,) best-known for the Ang Lee film adaptation. In 1963 Jack Twist (Mike Faist,) an itinerant cowboy with dreams of working at rodeos, takes a shepherding job on the titular Wyoming mountain where he's paired up with the taciturn Ennis Del Mar (Lucas Hedges.) The two are mainly meant to work separately, taking turns guarding the sheep from coyotes, but on one of the freezing nights Jack persuades Ennis to share the tent with him.

Stage-to-screen review:Everybody's Talking About Jamie

I loved Everybody's Talking About Jamie when it first transferred to London, but I did worry how long it would last without star names attached. As it turns out, it eventually took a pandemic to knock it off the West End stage, and while its recent return to the Apollo was short, its London run is officially only "paused," while a UK tour goes on, and a North American premiere is on the cards. And then there's this from the original creative team of writers Dan Gillespie Sells (music) and Tom MacRae (book and lyrics,) director Jonathan Butterell and choreographer Kate Prince, who've decided to turn it into something incredibly rare and precious: A movie musical without James Corden in it. There's a new, slightly starrier cast taking on the central roles, although a few of the original stage performers get cameo appearances, as do Jamie and Margaret Campbell, the story's original inspiration.

Theatre review: Everybody's Talking About Jamie

In what must be the first West End musical to be based on a BBC3 documentary, Dan Gillespie Sells (music) and Tom MacRae's (book and lyrics) Everybody's Talking About Jamie transfers to the Apollo from Sheffield, where it's set and where it premiered earlier this year. Jamie (John McCrea) is 16 and facing pretty dispiriting careers advice from his sour-faced form teacher Miss Hedge (Tamsin Carroll,) but he's already got very different and specific plans for how to make a living: He's never really been in the closet about his sexuality but the fact that he's always liked dressing up in his mother's clothes is more of a secret; but now, realising that it can actually be a job (there's a hat-tip to "Our Lady RuPaul,") he wants to be a drag queen when he grows up, and sees no reason not to get started straight away.