Brokeback Mountain To Be Adapted For The Stage As A Play With Music
It began life as an American cowboy same-sex romantic short story, then became a blockbuster film featuring steamy sex scenes between actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. Now Brokeback Mountain is set to be adapted into a major stage production, featuring music.
The short story by US writer Annie Proulx was first published by The New Yorker in 1997. It tells of the relationship between two cowboys, Ennis and Jack, over a twenty-year period. Herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain, Jack makes a pass at Ennis who overcomes his initial reluctance, and the pair have sex in a tent. So ensues a two-decade entanglement of repression, longing, sex, marriages to women, a battle to accept themselves and the idealistic pipe dream they could one day live on a ranch together as a couple in a society where that seems all but impossible.
The world premiere of the stage adaptation will be in London’s new theatre, Soho Place, from Wednesday 10 May to Sunday 20 August (with no announcement yet of an international tour).
Rather than a musical (done hilariously by comedy writer Andrew Byrne in 2008) or an opera (done by American composer Charles Wuorinen in Madrid in 2014), this will be a play with original music, which’ll be provided by Dan Gillespie Sells, lead singer of The Feeling, who is gay and has spoken about being raised by lesbian mothers.
It’ll star Mike Faist (Dear Evan Hansen; West Side Story) and Lucas Hedges (Manchester By The Sea; Boy Erased) in the lead roles.
The 2005 film won three Oscars, including Best Director for Ang Lee.
It marked a turning point for the entry of LGBTQIA+ films with same-sex dramatic love stories into the mainstream. It also heralded a new era for queer film, breaking ground for filmmakers to portray same-sex relationships by focusing on character and story rather than placing them within the history or politics of LGBTQIA+ social movements. Furthermore, it reimagined what masculinity within the classic western film tradition could mean.
Annie Proulx was initially dubious about the film’s screenplay – she wrote to director Ang Lee “begging to keep the language of the story intact.” She refused to visit the set, saying at the time: “I feared the landscape on which the story rests would be lost, that sentimentality would creep in, that explicit sexual content would be watered down.”
After viewing the film, she happily reported that none of that happened; she felt “knocked for a loop” at its accuracy, saying, “I may be the first writer in America to have a piece of writing make its way to the screen whole and entire.”
Proulx has since been heavily involved in adaptations; she wrote the book for Wuorinen’s operatic adaptation. She controversially told the Paris Review in 2009 she wishes she’s never written the story because fan fictions rewrite the tragic love story with happier endings, which, she said, drives her wild: “Those are not their characters. The characters belong to me by law.”
Nonetheless, in a statement, Proulx gave the new play adaptation her blessing.
“Brokeback Mountain has been recreated in several different forms, each with its own distinctive moods and impact,” she wrote. “Ashley Robinson’s script is fresh and deeply moving, opening sight lines not visible in the original nor successive treatments.”
Brokeback Mountain will be performed @sohoplace from Wednesday 10 May to Sunday 20 August.
