Review: MIDNIGHT COWBOY: A NEW MUSICAL, Southwark Playhouse

And so another stage-to-screen musical rolls into town. Based on the only adult-rated film to win an Oscar for Best Picture, Midnight Cowboy is about the friendship between male prostitute Joe Buck and con man Rico “Ratso” Rizzo in 1960s New York.

The show claims to have based the story on the original book by James Leo Herlihy but owes more to the 1969 film, not least its starting point. Young, dumb and full of ideas, Buck has travelled to the Big Apple to sleep with as many women as possible and make his fortune (preferably at the same time).

He’s barely off the bus when he picks up Cass but, after having sex with her, realises she is in the same line of work and ends up paying her. He switches to male clients but has no better luck. Despite initially being deceived by Rizzo out of twenty bucks, Buck forms a bond with the sick man and two work on moving down to Florida.

Paul Jacob French, in his tan tasselled jacket and too-small black hat, does well to realise Buck as a man outwardly hopeful, inwardly haunted and with misplaced faith in the American Dream. Even though he lives with his friend in an abandoned building alongside rats and cockroaches, he is ever optimistic. Max Bowden, on the other hand, plays the downtrodden Rizzo with the cynical air of someone who believes every chance is tainted or doomed to failure and every mark deserves what’s coming to them.

Midnight Cowboy was British director John Schlesinger’s first movie outside the UK and he went out of his way to mirror New York’s desperate urban decay in the sleazy, broken-down squalor of Buck and Ratso (played by Jon Voigt and Dustin Hoffman respectively). A walk through Central Park back then was an invitation to physical assault or worse, Times Square was a haven for pimps and prostitutes and the city itself was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Andrew Exeter’s set design doesn’t quite capture that grimy milieu but it is ambitious and more than par for productions in this space. Sharp, savvy videos from Jack Baxter add an extra layer of authenticity. Even if it doesn’t ever truly evoke the film’s time period, the staging has no shortage of dark atmosphere, smart touches and clever transitions. 

Bryony Lavery’s book cleaves to the general storyline of the source material and that’s the best that can be said for it. Chunky and clunky dialogue is smoothed out with the occasional zinger but it feels eternally rough around the edges.

Notable by its absence is Hoffman’s classic “I’m walking here!” scene as he just avoids being run over by a yellow cab, as is the one where Buck symbolically ditches his much-loved cowboy gear on his way to Miami. Given that this musical has a longer running time than the movie, it’s a mystery why these integral elements were omitted.

The score from Francis “Eg” White fares only slightly better. Before things have barely got going, he manages to murder in cold blood Harry Nilson’s breezy banger “Everybody’s Talkin’” and cruelly castrates the monumental “Theme From Midnight Cowboy” by John Barry.

A few songs ring out - “Whatever It Is You’re Doing” is a highlight - but it’s hard to believe that this is the same person that has worked with Kylie, Adele and Sam Smith given the sheer volume of forgettable numbers. His bacon is saved to an extent by an epic vocal performance from the underused Tori Allen-Martin and standout turns from Matthew White and Rohan Tickell.

It is Nick Winston’s direction, though, that takes the biscuit and the tin it came in. The first half has stop-start pacing that distracts from any sense of forward motion and the sex scene between Joe and Cass is possibly the least erotic thing seen on a London stage for quite some time. French and Bowden have passable accents but, for the most part, deeply unconvincing singing voices. Few scenes garner enough sympathy for us to really care about what happens to this hapless pair.

Winston is clearly a man in demand: his Burlesque The Musical debuted in Manchester last year and is coming to the Savoy Theatre in July. Whether that will have as many missteps as Midnight Cowboy is yet to be seen.

Midnight Cowboy: A New Musical continues until 17 May

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