The good news: West Side Story star Mike Faist is fantastic in @sohoplace’s stage adaptation of Brokeback Mountain. The bad news: the production is as galumphingly unsubtle as a “Cotton Eyed Joe” remix on a dance machine. There’s something admirably brave about taking on Annie Proulx’s sparse, shattering love story about two men on a mountain, already made into a now canonical film, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. But Jonathan Butterell’s production seems set on turning it into the cliché that it’s sometimes reduced to – “Oh, that gay cowboy movie!”
Oscar nominee Lucas Hedges and rising star Mike Faist are a major draw in the lead roles, making their London stage debuts at a venue that is not yet a year old. Hedges plays the reticent, strong but silent Ennis – Ledger in the film – while Faist takes on Gyllenhaal’s role, the gregarious talker Jack Twist. But both young actors are let down by a production that doesn’t seem to let their talent speak for itself.
