Cowbois and more

Cowbois, a transfer from the RSC, is a joyous fantasy, delivered pantomime style.  The basic premise is that in a boring backwater town in the Wild West, the men have been gone for a long while looking for gold and the women are bored, and frustrated.   Then a dashing outlaw,  Jack Cannon, comes to town.  Jack is different from the other men and turns out to be exactly what is needed to shake up the town. There's a sign on the wall in the bar saying 'No Guns, No Politics' which is frequently ignored and only really noticed when anyone shakes the status quo.  Full of cliches,  subverted and played for laughs, this is a play about masculinity, gender, gender roles and freedom, calling out how hard it is to be different, in the end though everyone gets to try out what works for them.

I’d say the play is about 20 minutes too long (I'd easily shave 10 minutes off each half) and it took me a while to get over the arch style being used here, but once I was in it was lovely.  The music (with a live band) and dancing was great, and did a fantastic job in showing how people were feeling and how much things had changed.  The audience was having the most fun I have heard for a while, whooping it up throughout, and it looked like the cast were having fun too. 

There was a serious message too and although that message was sometimes a bit on the nose, I loved the ending which underlined the point that freedom has to be fought for again and again.  

The programme was great too, with responses to the idea of ‘Gender Outlaw’ and a poem ‘The Shirt’ by Libra Levi Bridgman which summed up the point of the play very well I thought. 

Before the theatre I dropped in at the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2023  at the National Portrait Gallery - well worth a visit.  My favourites included this photo by Rona Bar and Ofek Afshalom of a baby with their tattooed parents, all mixed up together so it’s hard to see where one ends and the other begins

Then there were the photos catching children on the cusp of separating from their parents and becoming adults.  This one by Gilleam Trapenberg won second prize overall and just captures that moment of mum holding on while the boy is getting ready to break free 

The series by Phillipa James showing girls becoming women in a world of social media were all just beautiful too. 

You can look at some of the entrants here - so many about family and identity.  You can also enter a draw by voting for your favourite.