The queer side of cowboy culture was never exactly hidden, but it’s flying its spangled flag especially proudly right now. From the darkly sensual country anthems of Lil Nas X and Orville Peck to yearning-soaked films like The Power of the Dogno self-respecting chaps-wearer keeps their sexuality under their hat these days. Charlie Josephine’s Cowboys is a welcome theatrical addition to the canon, swapping the wordy historicism of his last play I, Joan for something that’s sexier, sillier, and a lot of unapologetic fun.
The first act plants us firmly in the dusty territory of kitschy westerns like Paint Your Wagon: designer Grace Smart’s handiwork sits gorgeously in the Royal Court, setting up a saloon bar that’s ripe for whiskey-fuelled mayhem. But as a group of full-skirted country wives hammily lament, nothing much happens in this two-horse town. Their husbands are off prospecting for gold, so Miss Lillian (the wonderful Sophie Melville) has turned innkeeper while her friends keep the town afloat. Then in walks bandit Jack Cannon (Vinnie Heaven) with a handsome face right off the “Wanted” poster above the bar. Instantly, the wives’ close-harboured longings find a focus, and this swaggering interloper finds a bed.
Co-directors Josephine and Sean Holmes pitch this all brilliantly. Lucy McCormick and Emma Pallant supply lashings of light relief as overwrought, chest-clutching smalltown damsels without ever pulling focus from Melville and Heaven’s simmering romance, which offers up camp of a more brooding, sensual kind. The flamboyant, leather-clad Jack is explicitly described as trans, and he serves up a different kind of masculinity; he makes hearts melt – but he also makes the tea. Soon, he and Lillian are coupling in a beautifully imagined, abstract sex scene full of western-inspired poses in flashes of blue light.
