American tragedy: ‘Brokeback Mountain’ gets poignant North American premiere at Chicago Shakes
“Brokeback Mountain” — 3 stars
“If you can’t fix it, you got a stand it.”
That stoic admonition from closeted cowboy Ennis Del Mar animates “Brokeback Mountain,” the spare, plainspoken adaptation of Annie Proulx’s mid-20th-century American tragedy now in a North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Published in The New Yorker in 1997, Proulx’s love story centers on ranch hands Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, who meet and fall in love while tending sheep on the titular Wyoming mountain in 1963.
Playwright Ashley Robinson’s adaptation faithfully follows Proulx’s short story, which also inspired Charles Wuorinen’s 2014 opera, and most famously Ang Lee’s 2005 Oscar-winning film starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Robinson’s version is a play-with-music, featuring Dan Gillespie Sells’ wistful, country-western songs that ably evoke the longing and resignation infusing ill-starred lovers Ennis (the lithe Harrison Ball) and Jack (Jack Cameron Kay, genial with a ready smile).
Their story unfolds as a memory under Jonathan Butterell’s subdued direction. It begins with the initial meeting between laconic Ennis and gregarious Jack, as their ornery boss Joe Aguirre (Thomas Cox delivering the first of three distinctly etched supporting performances) outlines their duties.
Alone on the mountain — a desolate shrub land designed by Tom Pye — the young men bond over their hardscrabble childhoods and disappointing employment. Ennis mentions his upcoming marriage to Alma (Cordelia Dewdney, long-suffering and resilient). Aspiring rodeo cowboy Jack describes his passion for bull riding in a homoerotically charged monologue that builds tension leading up to his and Ennis’ first sexual encounter. The encounter concludes with both men struggling to deny their attraction and its meaning.
“I’m not no queer,” insists Ennis.
“Me neither,” says Jack. “One-shot thing. Nobody’s business but ours.”
Constrained by period-typical homophobia and the threat of discovery, they marry women. Children follow: two girls for Ennis and Alma, a boy for Jack and his wife, Lureen (Alina Jenine Taber), the daughter of a wealthy Texan.
But Ennis and Jack’s love affair endures. Unspooling as a series of secret, sporadic trysts — fleeting moments of passion wrapped in weary acceptance and regret — it stretches over two decades.
Musical accompaniment comes courtesy of a quintet conducted by music director/pianist Jacob Yates. Fronted by The Balladeer, played by singer/guitarist Kat Eggleston, it also includes actor/guitarist Taber, harmonica player Paul Mertens, pedal steel guitarist Tom McGettrick and bassist Mary Halm — solid players all.
A fitting complement to the sensitive performances by Butterell’s cast, Sells’ quietly elegiac score serves as incidental music, establishing mood and expressing emotions that Proulx’s conflicted cowboys cannot.
One of the loveliest moments in Butterell’s production is their post-coital exchange after four years apart. Lying in bed together, Jack recounts injuries he sustained during his ill-fated bull riding career as Ennis gathers him into his arms. The gesture suggests what they could have, what they could be to each other. But when Jack, a desperate dreamer, proposes they work a ranch together, the repressed, resigned Ennis rejects the idea, fearing it could get them killed.
They settle for less than they desire, but the conflict remains, resurfacing in the play’s climax as Kay delivers Jack’s strangled cri de coeur: “I wish I knew how to quit you.”
Ball folds in on himself, crumbling as if Ennis had taken a punch to the gut. It’s a wrenching scene, one of the production’s most impassioned, and rightfully so.
Wisely, Butterell keeps sentimentality in check, as befits the bygone era when the action unfolds, when some men were less outwardly expressive than they are today.
Ball and Kay are appealing. But perhaps the director and his cast exercise a bit too much restraint. The production feels muted, which lessens the emotional ache and the desperate yearning at the heart of this tragic tale.
This “Brokeback Mountain” pats us gently. It should shake us to our core.
• • •
Location: Chicago Shakespeare Theater at Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave., Chicago, (312) 595-5600, chicagoshakes.com
Showtimes: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 1 and 7 p.m. Wednesday; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday; and 2 p.m. Sunday through June 28. Also, 1 p.m. June 18. No performance June 16.
Running time: About 100 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $65-$125
Parking: $22 in the Navy Pier garage with CST validation
Rating: For adults; contains sexual content, nudity, explicit language