Cowboy Mouth
Director: Christopher Weare
Performers: Nicholas Pauling and
Tinarie Van Wyk Loots
Venue: Intimate Theatre
Until: October 4
Rating: ***
Cowboy Mouth was written by Sam Shepard and Patti Smith in 1971, just after he had left his family for rocker Smith. The play tells the story of two people, stuck in a room together, circling each other's frustrated dreams.
Slim has left his wife and baby, lured by Cavale's assurances that he could be a rockstar. She is clearly not the best judge of these things as she spends a significant amount of stage-time addressing and feeding a stuffed crow.
Slim is torn between Cavale's magnetic mania and a return to cosy domesticity. The two bounce off each other in the small room, hurling crazy talk at each other, ordering food from the mysterious Lobster Man and banging on musical instruments until Slim can't bear it anymore.
The play opened at the American Place Theatre on April 29, 1971, with Shepard and Smith playing opposite each other. In a case of life imitating art imitating life, Shepard managed only a few performances before fleeing.
The title, Cowboy Mouth, is taken from a line in Bob Dylan's song Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. Watching this claustrophobic tale of frustrated dreams and tainted love unfold calls to mind another Dylan song. Slim and Cavale's story is the aftermath of Visions of Johanna, when Johanna has faded and all the little-boy-lost is left with is Louise and her hands full of rain. It's bleak stuff, but with glimmers of humour and poignancy.
It's quite self-indulgent, of course, and occasionally incomprehensible, but there are also lucid kapow moments. The death of rock 'n' roll, or at least the death of the dream that rock 'n' roll can save the world, is used to amplify the death of the American Dream.
Concepts of religion, consumerism, the endurance of love and art are all picked at and found vacant.
Director and designer Christopher Weare has turned the Intimate Theatre into a seedy rock 'n' roll grotto. The set is littered with guitars, bottles, dream-catchers and a microphone.
As one enters, Weare and fellow Mechanicals Guy De Lancey, Scott Sparrow and Emily Child are rocking out a 1970s jam on guitars, bass and drums.The Lobster Man is depicted via video projection for much of the show. Lights are carefully positioned around the stage and used to good effect. Nick Pauling and Tinarie Van Wyk Loots play Slim and Cavale with the requisite intensity.
They circle each other constantly, but never connect. Occasionally, they pause to pick up an instrument and belt out a song, amongst others Smith's Horses and The Rolling Stone's Sister Morphine. Van Wyk Loots has a smoky, effective rock voice.
While Cowboy Mouth occasionally bewilders, it's an engrossing snapshot of two people stranded, both doing their best to deny it.