There are times in God’s Cowboy when you could be excused for thinking that budget considerations alone have determined the costuming choices – though you might wonder how much is really saved by not providing the actors with shirts.
I’m being silly, of course. The costuming is fine. The actors do have shirts.
Though they do take them off.
A lot.
Gay male theatre often has a lot of bare chests. That’s partly because such theatre is a celebration of the diversity of human sexuality. (One unintended consequence of this is that straight audiences can be left with the impression that gay men are obsessed with sex – which is to miss the salient point that theatre celebrating gay sexuality is still making up for the millennium and a half in which our culture pretended gay sexuality simply didn’t exist. Except, of course, for the times when it was acknowledged so it could be persecuted.)
Though a paean to difference, gay theatre is also an assertion of kinship. It says In some ways my life may be different from the majority, but I share the same joys and face the same challenges.
In Les Solomon’s play, the universal joy is love, the challenge abuse.
Gentle, naïve twins Penny (Sophia Laurantus) and Peter (Nathaniel Savy) audition for a show. They’re successful, and join a cast filled out by the charismatic Daniel (Max Fernandez) and the disturbing Demetrious (Tate Wilkinson Alexander).
Peter and Daniel begin a showmance – but Daniel’s back history makes it difficult for him to give Peter what he needs.
Under the direction of Ella Morris, performances are engaging (though the pacing could be sharpened to make more of both the humour and the rising tension.)
The story is simple and appealing. Ironically, it could be argued the script needs both a trim (to stick closer to the chase) and a fleshing out (to answer some questions, especially regarding Daniel’s revelation to Penny and the response it invites.) But these supposed faults could be exactly how Solomon’s script achieves its winsome mood of wistful nostalgia.
For me, the most enthralling aspect is the presentation of that eternally uneasy relationship between love and sex.
There’s a wildness about sex, a physicality that has a disturbingly soft border with violence. Excitement is its bright side, abuse its dark.
The play represents several attempts by characters to tame this wildness: Peter and Penny valorise romantic love; Peter is a refugee from the dependable dream-land of classic movies; Daniel’s cowboy swagger safely repackages threat as confidence; and Daniel, as his character in the play within a play, cheekily posits a God who has gifted us sexuality and who wants us to enjoy it in every-which-way-we-can.
Provocatively, the Daniel of the dressing room also posits a God, though his spirituality has less of the cowboy about it, being rather a soul-stretching awareness that the divine gift of joy comes wrapped in moral responsibilities.
Paul Gilchrist
God’s Cowboy by Les Solomon
Produced by Little Stormy productions in association with LambertHouse Enterprises
At Flight Path Theatre until Feb 21
Image by David Hooley
Theatre Red 
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