Midnight Cowboy, Southwark Playhouse - new musical cannot escape the movie's long shadow

It seems a bizarre idea. Take a pivotal film in American culture that reset the perception of The Great American Dream at this, obviously, pivotal moment in American culture in which The Great American Dream, for millions, is being literally swiped away at gunpoint, And… make it into a musical? 

Stranger ideas have worked - try Evita and Assassins for starters, but there’s plenty more cut from unpromising cloth and don’t forget that the first words on the programme say ‘BASED ON THE NOVEL WRITTEN BY JAMES LEO HERLIHY’. For all that assertion, the key question persists: can the stage show step out from the longest of shadows cast by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in two of cinema’s most iconic roles? Well, what do you think?

We open on “Everbody’s Talkin’” and soon there’s a refrain or two of John Barry’s lilting theme, as Joe Buck washes his hands, literally so, of some violence in Texas and hops out of Houston to try his luck as a gigolo in New York City. Things do not go as planned, the naive countryboy’s ways not landing with the Big Apple’s worldly women. On being asked for payment for services rendered, one female John gives him a hard luck story, demands money for a taxi and the big lummox only hands it over! Hardly his intended business model and neither is turning gay tricks, definitely not in the masterplan for a self-confessed homophobe.

Having been shaken down by the low level conman and thief, Rico ‘Ratso’ Rizzo, and desperate for money, Joe seeks recompense, but soon realises that the hobbling, coughing, local hobo is no better off than he is and the two lonely, penniless guys bond in a vermin-infested squat, Ratso taking on the role of manager for the cowboy hustler. But it’s cold, Ratso is getting sicker and sicker and the work is intermittent at best. Miami’s sun and food that grows on trees is Ratso’s fantasy escape and he sells it to Joe. If you’ve seen the movie, you know how it ends…

The odd couple leads have the looks, Paul Jacob French’s Joe imposing with beefcake vibes and Max Bowden’s Ratso (pictured above) not. But they’re given so little to work with in Bryony Lavery’s episodic book and Francis “Eg” White’s score of samey songs, that they cannot get to grips with the core elements of the roles. The loneliness of life in a big city is never established on Natalia Alvarez’s expressionist sets, interiors looking like the exteriors of Walter Hill’s seminal NYC portrait, The Warriors, suggesting space rather than confinement. 

The central relationship’s paradox - grudging respect transforming into platonic love in a transactional world - does not emerge, as the chemistry between the drifters does not spark until the very end, by which time it’s, in dramatic terms, too late. Perhaps most disappointing, Musical Theatre’s trump card, its generation of enhanced emotional energy through the fusion of music, lyrics and singing, is left unplayed by numbers that seem to sit alongside the story rather than lifting it. This is White’s musical theatre debut, building on a solid career of writing hits and, rather like Joe himself, the fact that it’s his first rodeo does rather show.

There are some songs that work. Ratso’s “Don’t Give Up On Me Now” that closes the first act has a poignant reprise from Joe in the second, and Tori Allen-Martin, much the best singer amongst some variable voices, delivers some much needed soul on “Good Morning Joe” the Texan catching a break at last. Would French and Bowden have found the vulnerability, the charm, the pathos that would have had us really pulling for them with stronger material? To be honest, I’m not sure. Even 30 years on from last seeing the film, scenes and lines are still seared into my brain, dislodging them just too big an ask.

If that’s the chance any creative takes in working with existing IP, less forgivable are other missteps. Sex is at the heart of the narrative and it has to be transactional and sordid, inevitably leading to the self-disgust that suffuses Joe. That’s not easy for director, Nick Winston, to get right (especially these days) but surely it’s the job of the intimacy director not just to safeguard but also to contribute to the storytelling? Nobody expects actors to be exploited as in Last Tango In Paris, but so crucial an element of the narrative has to be done more convincingly, less prudishly, if the stakes are to be understood.

It is telling that this show, faulty in conception and execution, is supported by a programme that includes a song list (good) but fills nine of 28 large format pages with adverts and none with interviews, background essays, production photos. Yours for a mere £8 - and not good enough I'm afraid.

Joe Buck might have been better advised to stay in Texas and this show might have been better advised to stay on screen. Everybody’s talkin’, all right, but I wish we had nicer things to say.

• Midnight Cowboy at Southwark Playhouse until 17 May
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