[The Ballad of Billy Bob and Bobby Bill]
Pale pink and white cloth clouds grasp in fluffy banks over the Basement Studio stage. On a single mattress are two, improbably nonetheless, denim-shorts-clad, cowboys. They lie on high of one another, stacked like flapjacks, with solely the flashing of the silver studs on considered one of their belts giving the impression of motion. A big white sheet is strung between the billowing clouds and the mattress beneath, bisecting the Studio stage.
In the lengthy moments earlier than the viewers fills the seats, and the lighting state adjustments from the preshow setting, we take on this picture of the cowboy at relaxation. He will not be alone on the plains however resting in comfy companionship. This opening picture of repose, of quiet intimacy, is without doubt one of the most placing of the present.
Cowboy Dreaming is the most recent providing from Lunar Collaborative, offered beneath the path of Grace Augustine with devising assist from Bridie Thomson and Kermath Davies. Billed as a improvement season, the work options Georgie Llewellyn and Emily Hurley in quite a lot of acts together with lip syncs, strip teases, and comedic vignettes referencing the crooners of the previous or more moderen widespread tradition memes (for instance the satirical TV present Reno 911).
The present blends stay efficiency with a wealth of movie footage projected onto the massive dividing sheet. When the projector begins up the clouds tackle the light glamour of the cinema curtains now solely seen in venues just like the Academy Cinema. It is a stage inside a stage, efficiency inside a efficiency, a collection of desires inside the Lunar Collaborative dream.
I used to be curious to search out what this dream would supply by the use of commentary on, or subversion of, the acquainted Western tropes, the queer historical past of the Old West, and a current resurgence of the cowboy determine in each queer and wider widespread tradition. Equally I puzzled if there could be reference to the illusory nature of the cowboy narratives which regularly pass over the colonialism on the coronary heart of Western Expansion in America. The present made repeated use of movie footage from the 50s and 60s (assume The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, a full trailer for Johnny Guitar, all smashed along with sweaty late-stage Elvis clips and photographs of pounding, surging waves). Later within the work pictures of gender bending appeared – clips of David Bowie at peak androgyny are performed, and Hurley presents a sputtering efficiency of ‘Life on Mars’. This amalgam of references actually introduced many of those acquainted Western tropes to the fore, but when there was a deeper logic behind the picks made, in relation to the staged motion, it evaded me.
The Elvis clips provided Llewellyn and Hurley alternatives to interact in some shakin’ and a groanin’ which then result in ejaculations of varied varieties, however pushing this already performative and sexually provocative motion to the intense didn’t seem to disclose some new that means within the motion.
Another clear second of connection between the movie footage and the stage motion was equally opaque in intention. One scene, in a mirroring of the motion of an earlier clip, noticed Hurley undressed after which slowly wearing a sequined night robe. I believed this may turn out to be a remark upon the female physique and the way it’s served as much as viewers in both movie or theatre types, however this too appears to be a replica of the motion reasonably than a chance to expose some additional that means.
I felt as if I used to be being tumbled within the waves crashing collectively on the display, a sense additional compounded by the Bowie clips which drastically depart from the established (and largely explicitly Western) references and symbols. However, within the nature of a dream, maybe that is the purpose.
If you let go of wanting a crucial evaluation of the determine of the ‘Cowboy’ the present presents many delights, significantly the magnetism of the 2 central performers. Llewellyn is tremendously gifted (as demonstrated of their excessive gentleness and pathos within the 2022 season of Chrome Dome and Schizo, and their manufacturing of side-splitting comedy in The Wedding). Over the course of Cowboy Dreaming, Llewellyn contorts themselves into rictuses of pleasure and ache in equal measure. It is immensely satisfying to observe an actor so current, so consumed by the second of efficiency, that each fibre of the physique is engaged. Hurley is equally compelling in numerous roles together with that of a forlorn cowboy lover, an emotionless younger actor beset by a crazed casting agent, and as a human tumbleweed.
There are many moments which generated nice laughter from the viewers, and in addition moments which produced an environment of awe and contemplation, significantly these accompanied by the best Western music of all time (Ennio Morricone’s Sergio Leone score). I discovered authentic footage of Hurley garbed in a poncho, Stetson, and cowboy boots striding throughout (what seemed to be) a West Coast seashore, oddly fascinating. As the scene shifted to the Auckland CBD the curious glances of native punters felt as isolating because the desert-like expanse. Hurley’s cowboy was made an much more lonesome determine for travelling via populated locations, a relic of the previous adrift in our trendy world. This was essentially the most lucid the dream grew to become, and using this authentic movie footage might be made much more central to the work.
The alternative to sleep, to dream, to lie within the arms of your moustachioed lover is –if just for 90 minutes –a candy respite from the loneliness of the trendy world.
Cowboy Dreaming performs the Basement Theatre twenty seventh February to the 2nd of March 2024
