A good effort, but Why?
The 1969 Oscar winning film Midnight Cowboy (the only X rated film to win Oscars) gave Jon Voight screen recognition and sealed Dustin Hoffman as a great movie actor. It is a bleak film which ends badly – so the obvious choice to re-create as a stage musical?
Well it seems to have been for Bryony Lavery (book) and Francis ‘Eg’ White, 3 time Novello award winner with the songs. And the first half did not bode well – with an unnecessarily extended sex scene (with added singing) and nothing much of the Joe Buck and Rico ‘Ratso’ Rizzo relationship development for which Voight and Hoffman turned in such magnificent performances. And of course, and necessarily, the third star of the film (New York itself) got little chance in a theatre to shine.
Which is not to say that the actors in general, and Paul Jacob French as Buck with Max Bowden as Rizzo (with Tori Allen-Martin as the sexually singing Cass) did not show real talent.
But it was in the second half (and we did lose audience over the interval) that the show started to take-off – with the Buck and Rizzo co-dependency developing. Here also the music was slightly more upbeat, and the pace quickened.
There was a fine set piece in an homage to a Warhol ‘Factory’ party and the supporting ensemble throughout managed taut choreography. And the principals showed that they could hold, and deliver, a tune.
The ending is of course sad, and downbeat in the extreme, but the final song by French was extremely well delivered and moving.
Overall then, a curate’s egg of a musical, not through any failures of acting, singing or production, or even quality of writing (words and music) – but perhaps that the underlying ‘book’ gained nothing through the imposition of a ‘musical’ structure.
It didn’t need it and didn’t benefit from it.