今日吃瓜

Written by Charlie Josephine and directed by Kate Gaul, Cowbois follows a town in the deep west populated only by women and children, the men having left a year ago in search of gold, leaving the drunken sheriff to watch over them.

It isn’t until the arrival of Jack Cannon (Jules Billington), whose handsome likeness is blasted on wanted posters distributed by the state throughout the streets, that the townsfolk begin to live for themselves for the first time, having still been trapped under the ghosts of their husband’s thumbs.

The audience is welcomed into the theatre by a quartet of country singers, banjos and all, twanging away on the stage set up to look like a saloon. They set up in the rafters throughout the rest of the production, with musical director and lyricist Clay Crighton not only on on the piano and violin, but also making a brief appearance in the second act.

“Pretty quickly we do turn away from that classic country feel, which, spoilers, it goes back there when the men arrive and the women and non binary folk are trying to, you know, break free of that,” Crighton told Star Observer. “It goes everywhere. It’s pretty genre bending as well.”

When Jack makes his debut, the music tales a distinctly more bluesy and contemporary feel, showcasing the way he straddles two different worlds.

There is no secret made of Jack’s transness, but the women care less about the fact that he was not born a man than they do about his rakish good looks and charm. The barkeep, Miss Lillian (Emily Cascarino), falls for him almost too quickly, but the chemistry between Billington and Cascarino is undeniably sweet and sexy.

The show is at its best when one of the townsfolk, Lucy (Faith Chaza), inspired by Jack, realises she too is the only one in charge of her life, switching out her dress for jeans and a shirt, and reintroducing themselves as Lou.

One of the factors of the show that stood out to me almost immediately was that I recognised multiple members of the Sydney queer community, both on stage and behind the scenes. It seems like such a small- and obvious- thing, that this sort of production is backed by an explicitly queer team, but it was heartwarming being there on opening night and seeing so many familiar faces in the room, whose work I know and have loved before.

Crighton said that the number of queer-identified people in the cast and production team was helpful to the creative process, most of them already on the same page for the story they wanted to tell.

“I think when you have this many queer people in the room, there’s sort of like, a base level of things you don’t need to talk about,” Crighton said.

“I would say it’s more about the fact that there are conversations that don’t need to be had, which I feel so lucky to be a part of, to not have to have those conversations, which are tricky when you are the only one in the room.

“It’s sort of like an already known language. We’ve already got kind of a baseline of understanding. So I guess we can delve deeper into what the text is is trying to convey.”

The show could be critiqued for lack of realism, or its over-reliance on progressive queer morals, but I was too caught up in the trans joy in the room to notice much, and when I did, I hardly even cared. Yes, the script was a bit fantastical at times, often challenging the audience to just go with it, but given the current political climate and the unrelenting attacks on trans people globally, I was more than happy to play pretend for an evening.

is playing at the Seymour Centre until 13 December.聽