"Smug, Glib, Impertinent" AND Immature

FLASH - Just got back from NYC where I snuck in the back door and saw previews to the biggest thing to hit The Great White Way since one of Tommy Tune's rhinestone tap shoes broadsided Truman Caput's swelled noggin at the opening of Cabaret:The High School Production. Of what do I speak? Why Brokenback Mountin': The Broadway Musical, of course! ........ Taking its cue from The Lion King, The Producers, The Three Stooges in Outer Space and Lord of the Rings, apparently this show too, is based on a recent Hollywood blockbuster. It's all about cowboys - and the cowboys who love them. If you know what I mean. Storywise, it's not all that original an idea. The producers could have staged the same love story in any males-only field - a Turkish bath or a pirate ship or the Stephen Harper's cabinet. ................ But this is Broadway, baby - and it's all about the music! From the opening strains of Oklahomo to that rousing barn-burner of a closing number, the fiddle-fueled line-dancin' foot-stompin' Cowboys In Love, this show is one knee-slappin' good time! I always assumed that gay cowboys were good at ropin' and brandin' and bronc-bustin' - but I never dreamed that were such whizzes at choreography and show-tunes. Quel surprise!!! These boys put the 'hoot' back in 'Hootenany.' Walking out of the theatre, there was nary a soul who wasn't humming the show's centrepiece, the poignant If I Were a Cowboy (A Rootin' Tootin' Tootin' Tootin Tootin' Tootin Cowboy, Too,) in which 'Big Gun Cavendish' accompanies himself on ukelele and sings of his dreams as he wanders a moonlit set of giant cactii. ..................... That said, kudoes to the set design people for their breathtaking recreation of the Canadian landscape. In the scene where 'Big Gun' first meets the new ranch-hand, a grain elevator magically rises from the taut, washboard flatness that is the Canadian prairie - well, let's just say, 'Dorothy, I have a feeling we aren't in Ontario anymore.' As for the lighting, the whole spectacle dazzles and sparkles like sunlight gleaming off Gary Cooper's hot rod in High Noon. ......... And speaking of big guns, Broadway newcomer Chas Odeller is outstanding as the veteran ranch hand 'Big Gun Cavendish.' As his love interest, the similarly relatively unknown Wil Wheaton proves more than capable as the newly-arrived wannabe cowpoke 'Tom Cruise.' For comic relief, the show's producers have wisely tapped that old-time vaudevillian Billy Crystal to goose things up as head chuck-wagon chef 'Saucy Stevie.' .......................... The buzz has it that this show has legs. If it proves to have the stamina and staying power that its been showing recently on a nightly basis (and twice a day on Wednesday and Sundays!) industry insiders are predicting that Brokenback Mountin' will likely do for gay cowboys just what Vampyros Lesbos: The Off-Broadway Musical did for lesbian vampires. So put that in your pipe and suck on it all you naysayers who claim that the musical is dead. ................ In the way of constructive criticism - Note to the producers: the only part of the show that left a bad taste in my mouth was when 'Big Gun' does his first solo, the surprisingly limp This Prairie Son Always Rises Early in which a good stiff wind suggestively blows tumbleweeds amoungst neon-lit prickly cactii. We get it, okay. No need to hit us over the head with a sledge-hammer. You only cheapen yourselves when you resort to overly-obvious stereotypes and cheap jokes. Tsk, tsk. ........ Other than that, this show has moxy! In fact, it's got it coming out its ears!