Ugly and humdrum: Brokeback Mountain, at @sohoplace, reviewed

Brokeback Mountain, a play with music, opens in a scruffy bedroom where a snowy-haired tramp finds a lumberjack’s shirt and places it over his nose. Then he inhales. Who is this elderly vagrant? And why is he absorbing the scent of an abandoned garment? Two hours later, at the play’s close, we finally learn that the old man, Ennis, is sniffing a shirt that once belonged to Jack Twist who became his lover while they worked as shepherds in Wyoming.

Yes, shepherds. The ‘gay cowboy’ label is a misnomer because the lads are ranching sheep, and their affair belongs to the half-forgotten days of homosexual persecution. The precise year, 1963, is signalled to us with a clunky line from Jack about JFK’s decision to escalate America’s involvement in Vietnam. ‘It might get better before it gets worse,’ opines Ennis. And that’s the last we hear of politics.

Alone in the hills, the lusty shepherds spend a couple of scenes furtively ogling each other’s bodies during their morning ablutions and then bang! They make love inside a scout tent whose diaphanous fabric is tastefully lit from within so that their coition is presented in a suggestive outline without any hint of onstage porn.