My review (I also sent this to the theatre company):
Brokeback Mountain - a play
Ennis and Jack love each other. So much for that, because society prohibits them from telling anybody, least of all each other. Besides the frustration and hurt this causes, pureness, understanding and love are the main things that characterise their bond. Brokeback Mountain tells the story of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy who form a lifelong bond while herding sheep on the titular mountain one summer. When they come down off the mountain Ennis acts like it really was that one-shot thing he was talking about after their first night together. They leave each other and both get married. Four years later they reunite to find that their love for each other has all but diminished and they embark on a long, difficult affair.
It all started with a short story by Annie Proulx that was published in the New Yorker in 1997. Then came the movie. Even before the movie came out Jos van Kan and theatre company De Wetten van Kepler obtained the rights to the short story to turn it into a play and now the Dutch are the first to see the play that was based on the short story. Sieger Sloot and Willem Schouten give life to respectively Jack and Ennis, and they do this in an admirable way. When you watch the play you really have to let go of the movie and focus on the short story.
I am a big fan of the short story and the movie, and before I saw the play I really wondered what a play would add to the whole Brokeback-experience. I realised after seeing it that it has nothing to do with the movie but everything with the short story: it is so faithful to Annie Proulx' story with all the descriptions of the rough nature that Jack and Ennis are part of. Comparing the movie and the play is useless. It is now part of the perfect triptych: short story, movie and play. The translation was very nicely done and the way the actors delivered the key passages from the story showed their understanding of it. Willem Schouten and Sieger Sloot were excellent in their roles. I saw the play in Amsterdam a week after the premiere and in Soest, 5 weeks after the premiere. The actors were much more in tune with each other than in the first week they played together and they seemed to be enjoying playing together. The emotions were very raw.
The most poignant thing in the whole play was that the only moment we see pure serenity and peacefulness on Ennis's face is the moment he embraces Jack from behind in front of the campfire that summer on Brokeback.
Melissa