Look, I know musicals don’t have to be all sweetness and light, but it’s hard to think of a piece of intellectual property less suited to the form than this bleak tale of a dimwit male prostitute and his sidekick sliding into penury and degradation in 1960s New York.
The rickety stage adaptation by Bryony Lavery (book) and Francis ‘Eg’ White (music and lyrics), pointedly claims to be based on James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel – i.e., not on John Schlesinger’s better-known, Oscar-winning 1969 film with Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Yet the musical follows the film’s narrative closely and coarsely, slapping largely indifferent songs over the action seemingly at random.
