Brokeback Mountain stage adaptation to run in West End with Mike Faist and Lucas Hedges

A stage adaptation of Brokeback Mountain is to make its world premiere in the West End.

The new play, written by Ashley Robinson with songs by Dan Gillespie Sells, will run at @sohoplace from 10 May – 12 August 2023. Tickets are on sale now.

It will star Tony and BAFTA Award-nominee Mike Faist (Dear Evan Hansen, West Side Story) as Jack with Academy Award-nominee Lucas Hedges (Manchester By The Sea) as Ennis.

They will be joined Eddi Reader (Fairground Attraction) as The Balladeer who will perform the songs alongside and on stage band made up of Sean Green, Meelie Traill, Julian Jackson and BJ Cole.

Completing the cast are Emily Fairn as Alma, Paul Hickey as Older Ennis and Martin Marquez as Joe/Bill/Jack’s Father. They’ll be joined by understudies Rob Alexander-Adams, Tom Mahy and Sophie Reid.

Jonathan Butterell directs the production which is based on Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story that was made into a hit film in 2005.

Wyoming 1963: a wild landscape where people live in extreme rural poverty in tight, insular and conservative communities. When Ennis and Jack take jobs on the isolated Brokeback Mountain, all their certainties of life change forever as they flounder in unexpected emotional waters of increasing depth.

Dan Gillespie-Sells beautiful Country and Western songs weave heartbreakingly through this intense tale of an irresistible and hidden love spanning twenty years and its tragic consequences.

Book Brokeback Mountain tickets here »

The creative team is completed by set and costume designer Tom Pye, lighting designer David Finn and sound designer Christopher Shutt. It is produced by Nica Burns with Adam Blanshay Productions, Lambert Jackson Productions, and Katy Lipson for Aria Entertainment

Annie Proulx said: “Brokeback Mountain has been recreated in several different forms, each with its own distinctive moods and impact. Ashley’s script is fresh and deeply moving, opening sight lines not visible in the original nor successive treatments.”

Ashley Robinson added: “I’m honoured to be entrusted by Annie Proulx to bring new life in new form to her timeless and universal story. A story that means so much to so many, and will surely mean as much to a whole new generation.

“Dan Gillespie Sells’ powerful and beautiful songs, sung by The Balladeer, give voice to the tumultuous inner landscape of our wannabe cowboys (both young men of few words), and provide the scope of our vast and brutal outer landscape, not to mention allowing Proulx’s poetic prose to literally sing.

“Grateful as all hell to reunite with Jonathan Butterell and to put this piece in his skilled and sensitive hands—what lucky actors, what a lucky team, and what a lucky production, all coming together under Nica Burns, in her marvel of a new space, @sohoplace. Let’s ride.”

For more information, visit sohoplace.org