Cowbois review: Sexy, silly, surreal cabaret swaggers through the queer side of cowboy culture

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 Dog, no self-respecting chaps-wearer keeps their sexuality under their hat these days. Charlie Josephine’s Cowbois 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.

Josephine’s play mixes retro references with modern visions of what a queer utopia could be: one where kids uncomplicatedly understand that gender can change, and where the presence of trans rebels liberates these repressed women to dress up, cut loose, abandon stereotypes. But you can’t just banish straight men, either now or in 19th-century cowboy land – and it’s when the town’s husbands return in the second act that things get messy.

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Still, Cowbois doesn’t really try to seriously explore how queerness and heterosexual norms can co-exist: instead, it explodes into a fun, chaotic cabaret of surreal dance scenes and endless-feeling cowboy shoot-outs. We’re in weird territory here, spliced between play and musical, and this all feels a bit too loose and sketchy to blast away the questions raised by what’s gone before.

But if Cowbois doesn’t always satisfy the brain, it’ll keep your heart, soul and dancing feet busy. It’s a late-announced but thoroughly welcome transplant from the RSC, filling the Royal Court with a sweltering blast of joy in a chilly, uncertain January.

Royal Court Theatre, until 10 February