It has been announced that the world premiere of Brokeback Mountain, a new play with music, will run at @sohoplace from 10 May-12 August, starring Mike Faist (West Side Story) and Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) who both make their West End debuts.

Written by Ashley Robinson with songs by Dan Gillespie Sells, based on Annie Proulx’s short story, Brokeback Mountain will be directed by Jonathan Butterell.

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 unresistible and hidden love spanning twenty years and its tragic consequences.

This is a play with original music, performed by the extraordinary singer Eddi Reader, who will be joined by her onstage Country and Western band: Sean Green (piano/MD), Meelie Traill (upright bass), Julian Jackson (chromatic harmonica), BJ Cole (pedal steel guitar).

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 said: “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.”

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