Brokeback Mountain starring Lucas Hedges and Mike Faist - review round-up

Brokeback Mountain – an underpowered adaptation

Proulx’s story – which follows Ennis and Jack, two sheep-herders working in rural Wyoming, as their passionate love develops in secret over 20 years – was showered with acclaim as a short story and as a film. Is it praised as much as a play?

Some critics admire it. Nick Curtis (Evening Standard, ★★★★) calls it "a potent, subtle piece of dramatic alchemy” while Arifa Akbar (Guardian, ★★★★) appreciates its “distilled purity”. Fiona Mountford (iNews, ★★★★) finds it "tender and beautiful" and Marianka Swain (LondonTheatre, ★★★★★) labels it a "gorgeously poetic" piece of theatre that "thoroughly breaks your heart".

Others are not so sure. For David Benedict (Variety), writer Robinson “confuses literary with literal” and is guilty of “telling as well as showing”, while for Mert Dilek (TheArtsDesk, ★★) the play is “artistically conservative and emotionally inert”. For Matt Wolf (New York Times), “the bare bones of the narrative are there” but “the dramatically necessary flesh and blood and sinew are not”.

Most reviewers sit in the middle. The play “has its own delicate, stirring power” even if it “struggles to muster the scale, sweep and ultimately the tragic force that this love story demands”, writes Sam Marlowe (The Stage, ★★★) writes. “It remains a story full of feeling, but never quite rises to the heights of poetry and meaning that you expect,” agrees Sarah Crompton (WhatsOnStage, ★★★).

Brokeback Mountain – Fantastic Faist

Hedges has risen to fame over the last seven years through film roles in Manchester by the Sea, Lady Bird and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Faist, meanwhile, earned acclaim on stage in Newsies and Dear Evan Hansen, then in Steven Spielberg’s screen version of West Side Story. Here, they play Ennis and Jack respectively.

Faist is particularly praised. He is “magnetic” for Andrzej Lukowski (TimeOut, ★★★), “lights up the stage” for Dominic Cavendish (Telegraph, ★★★) and “radiates volatile charisma” for Marlowe. For Jessie Thompson (Independent, ★★) he has “the impishness of Timothée Chalamet and the electric emotional intelligence of Andrew Scott”. It’s true, writes Wolf, Faist is “really wonderful”.

Hedges is less admired. For Marlowe, his Ennis “almost vibrates with suppressed hunger and a jittery awareness of how dangerously transgressive, in a hyper-masculine environment, their love is”. For Thompson, however, he “lacks a certain kind of gruff gravitas”; for Cavendish, he “lacks the charisma Ledger mustered”; and for Clive Davis (Times, ★★★), he “smoulders”, but only “fitfully”.

Together, though, the pair work well, according to most. “The two have powerful sexual chemistry but also great ease,” writes Curtis – and they are well supported by British actor Emily Fairn, making her stage debut as Alma, Ennis’ wife. She is "confused, afraid, embarrassed and angry", writes Swain, and thoroughly "fantastic".

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Brokeback Mountain – an unsubtle staging

So much for the play and the performances, then – but what about the production itself? Director Butterell and composer Gillespie Sells have worked together before on the huge hit Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Are the critics captivated by their creative collaboration again?

Gillespie Sells’ country-infused score, which is performed live by Scottish singer-songwriter Eddi Reader, is well-received by some. It has “a melancholy beauty” for Crompton and sounds “ravishing” for Curtis. “Pedal steel guitar strains tremble in the air, piano chords cascade like brooks, an ethereal harmonica conjures a mood of wailing longing,” describes Cavendish. “Beautiful.”

Others disagree. “The music feels both heavy-handed and indistinct,” writes Thompson, while Benedict thinks it “tips over from initially atmospheric into generic”. The critics are similarly split over the rest of the staging, which takes place on a sparse stage populated by campfires and tents.

Butterell’s production has “an intoxicating quality of eloquent stillness” according to Mountford and is “a further indication of what the remarkable, peculiar sohoplace can do” for Curtis. For Thompson, though, it is “as galumphingly unsubtle as a Cotton Eyed Joe remix on a dance machine”. The story should be “elegiac, erotic and unfolds upon a hilly, chilly wilderness”, she writes, but Butterell “loudly telegraphs all of this with clunky devices that detract from the material”.

Brokeback Mountain – the verdict

Some critics love this new version of Annie Proulx’s short story, finding first-time writer Robinson’s adaptation arresting, the West End debuts of Hedges and Faist impressive, and the staging and songs from Butterell and Gillespie Sells extremely atmospheric.

Others are not particularly enamoured of the show, though. For them, Faist is fantastic, but Hedges is slightly underwhelming and Robinson’s script, Butterell’s staging and Gillespie Sells’ soundtrack are clumsy – and this stage adaptation of the story is nowhere near as engrossing as the 2005 film.

Five stars from LondonTheatre’s Swain and four stars from Curtis in the Evening Standard, Akbar in the Guardian, and Mountford for iNews contrast with two stars from Thompson in the Independent and chilly reviews from Wolf and Benedict for the New York Times and Variety respectively.

Middling, three-star write-ups from the rest of the reviewers suggest that this Brokeback Mountain has made it halfway up the hill, but failed to reach the peak of critical acclaim.