Siren Theatre Co brings UK hit to Australia with ambitious cast and original score.
The Western genre has always been about transformation. Rough landscapes, forging new identities, frontier towns becoming sites where social rules can be rewritten. Charlie Josephine's Cowbois, receiving its Australian premiere at the Seymour Centre this November, takes this transformation literally, using the Wild West setting to explore gender identity, expression, and the revolutionary potential of queer community.
The premise is deceptively simple: in a sleepy town where husbands have vanished chasing gold, women drift through days until handsome bandit Jack Cannon arrives seeking refuge from bounty hunters. But this isn't merely gender-bending casting or performative role-swapping. As director Kate Gaul emphasises, Cowbois explores "gender expression from the inside," telling stories of trans and non-binary characters rather than simply having cisgender actors play against type.
This distinction matters significantly. Theatre has long history of cross-gender casting, but such choices typically serve practical or comedic purposes rather than genuine engagement with the transgender experience. Josephine's script, which earned a 2024 WhatsOnStage Award nomination for Best New Play following its Royal Shakespeare Company premiere, appears to use the Western setting not as costume but as a genuine exploration of how frontier spaces allowed for different forms of self-determination.
The Australian production's scale demonstrates serious ambition. Sixteen performers including a live band, original music and lyrics by Clay Crighton, and a nearly three-hour running time suggest a theatrical experience designed to immerse audiences in a fully realised world. This scope aligns with the show's UK five-star reviews praising its "joyous" and "fantastical" qualities, suggesting a production that embraces theatrical possibility rather than grim realism.
Gaul's direction brings considerable experience with large-scale musical theatre, including Opera Australia's The Magic Flute and her company's previous work. Her observation that Cowbois is "entertaining, theatrical, and sometimes just plain silly, but it's also a provocation" captures the balance necessary for commentary theatre to succeed by engaging audiences emotionally before challenging them intellectually.
The cast includes performers working across gender identities, with Jules Billington (they/them) taking the central role of Jack Cannon. The production's pronoun listings for all cast and creative team members signals a commitment to gender inclusivity extending beyond casting. This attention to how artists identify themselves reflects broader shifts in Australian theatre toward acknowledging that representation matters both onstage and off.
Clay Crighton's dual role as composer/lyricist and performer indicates that the original musical content is integral to the storytelling rather than merely incidental. In the past, Western musicals have produced iconic works from Oklahoma! to Paint Your Wagon, but these typically reinforce traditional gender roles, not at all questioning them. An original score written specifically for this queer Western provides fresh musical vocabulary for a familiar genre.
The creative team's inclusion of intimacy director Rhiannon Bryan indicates we'll experience scenes requiring careful choreography of physical contact. This is increasingly standard practice for contemporary theatre, particularly within work dealing with sexuality and gender. This professional support ensures performers' comfort while serving artistic needs.
The Seymour Centre's commitment to the production fits their 50th anniversary celebration and ongoing support for queer storytelling. Acting Artistic Director Colette Vella's reference in media outlets to previous successes including the "sell-out, award-winning The Inheritance" positions Cowbois within lineage of substantive LGBTQI+ theatre rather than tokenistic programming.
This Australian premiere offers the opportunity to experience an internationally acclaimed work that uses the Western genre's familiar tropes (saloons, bandits, frontier towns etc) to explore urgent contemporary questions about identity, community, and belonging in decidedly unfamiliar ways.
Cowbois runs November 20 to December 13 at the Seymour Centre's Reginald Theatre. Tickets and more info at https://www.seymourcentre.com/event/cowbois/
(image: supplied)
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