Midnight Cowboy: This musical adaptation is disquieting and distasteful

Telegraph

12-04-2025

Telegraph readers of a certain age will doubtless remember John Schlesinger's triple Oscar-winning, 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Based on the 1965 novel by James Leo Herlihy, it follows the unlikely friendship between a Texan wannabe gigolo and a louche but loveable street hustler from the Bronx, all against a seductive New York backdrop. A succès de scandale for its uncompromising depiction of homosexual desire, it was both emotionally powerful and beautifully acted.
But sadly this new musical adaptation, with a book by Bryony Lavery and a soundtrack by Ivor Novello Award-winning composer Francis 'Eg' White, does not even come close to matching its famed predecessor. Here, naive Joe Buck comes to New York to seek his fortune, whereupon he befriends conman Rico 'Ratso' Rizzo. We follow the pair's struggle to survive the 'new Babylon' of the Big Apple: Joe sells his body for sex while Ratso's health deteriorates. A bus trip to Miami offers some hope of sunshine and salvation.
With their damaged backstories, Joe and Ratso make deeply flawed anti-heroes, and wouldn't be out of place in a Balzac novel or a Baudelaire poem. Nor, too, an Edward Hopper painting – set in that most unfeeling of metropolises, Midnight Cowboy is a remarkable study of urban alienation and acute loneliness, not to mention an evisceration of the much-vaunted American Dream.
Yet director Nick Winston's overly long production, with its brazen depiction of a seedy demi-monde of illicit sexual encounters, is disquieting, distasteful and at times even disgusting. (At one point, a character vomits after giving Joe oral sex in a cinema.) Winston's choreography is largely derivative from boy bands of the noughties, but makes good use of Andrew Exeter's sparse, harshly illuminated set.
Despite a valiant attempt, Paul Jacob French lacks ardour as the cowboy-jacketed Joe, whereas Max Bowden – playing Ratso complete with a Kevin Spacey-esque, Keyser Söze limp – admirably mixes volubility with vulnerability. Tori Allen-Martin's Cass – a feisty New Yorker who, in a comedic role reversal ends up being paid by Joe for sex – utterly captivates, delivering her song Whatever It Is You're Doing while practically writhing in ecstasy.
But the lugubrious subject matter and upbeat rock music are mismatched. After a promising start with Everybody's Talkin' (the title song from the original film), subsequent numbers feel banal, and occasionally descend into painful, atonal caterwauling.
Even as a paean to the strength and durability of male friendship, this musical does not do enough to move its audience, nor bring out deep emotion – and thus the violent denouement fails to resonate as fully as it should. Notwithstanding a couple of strong, standout performances, this curate's egg of a production feels uneven, unsatisfying and wholly gratuitous.