Oh, how we love those mysterious, solitary strangers who materialize in a town and upend the local routine. With its evocative title and such lines as “You’re not from ’round here” (you can just hear the twang), David Cale’s new solo play erects some familiar signposts. Is the newcomer going to seduce a lonely soul? Are lives going to be irrevocably changed? Yes and yes, but not in ways we have been conditioned to expect.
Cale plays every part in the astounding “Blue Cowboy” (at the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn through Nov. 8), starting with Andrew, who also acts as our narrator. A writer from New York, Andrew is spending a month in Ketchum, Idaho, not long after the pandemic, to work on a screenplay. It doesn’t take much detective work for Will, a ranch hand, to suss out that Andrew is visiting, and the show recounts what happens as the two men get to know each other.
“Blue Cowboy” is a modest love story, told in a direct, unadorned manner, but it is also complicated, funny, tender and stupendously poignant. In some ways, it’s a relatively predictable account of an attraction that could possibly blossom into much more, if not for daunting odds — Cale drops a “Brokeback Mountain” reference, cheekily pre-empting the inevitable comparison. Yet “Blue Cowboy,” which is masterfully written and just as masterfully performed, never stops surprising.
Everything separates these men, from their generations to their occupations and their relationships to the world around them — Will lives in terror of being found out to be gay while Andrew’s much more comfortable with himself. Still, they get along, and happily startle each other. After offering Will some hummus, Andrew immediately administers the mental equivalent of a slap on the forehead: “Cowboys don’t eat hummus.” This one does, though, and he especially likes the garlic kind.
Discoveries abound. Will takes Andrew to an evening of cowboy poetry; Andrew introduces him to Chris Offutt’s short-story collection “Out of the Woods.” They both like Carole King — her song “I Feel the Earth Move” incites a memorable visual and aural segue.
Much of the time, Andrew sounds as if he can’t quite believe what’s happening, including during sex: “I think of those bucking horses,” he says. “If I can stay on, do I get a prize?” He might occasionally sound hesitant, flustered, but he also drives the story with an unerring sense of suspenseful pacing that’s bolstered by Cale’s performance.
As an actor, Cale, who was born in Britain and has been living in the United States since 1979, moves smoothly from Andrew’s soft English accent to the Western burrs of Will and assorted supporting characters — a sheriff, a vet’s assistant, a woman who makes a big impression with just a few sentences.
Monologues are often associated with autofiction, a vein Cale tapped in his play with music “We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time,” which was at the Public Theater in 2019. But he has also toyed with the expectations placed on the genre in “Harry Clarke” (2017) and “Sandra” (2022), both of which he wrote but did not perform in when they ran in New York.
I was so taken in by “Blue Cowboy,” which was commissioned by the Sun Valley Playwright’s Residency, that I often wondered if it was based on a true story. On the ride back from the theater, I even scrolled through Cale’s Instagram account to see if there were photos of a dog that could be Shelley, an Australian shepherd who plays a major part in the story. (Mind you, Cale makes Shelley come alive better than any photo or video could, and he never stoops to expressing her direct perspective.)
The show, unobtrusively directed by Les Waters (“Eurydice,” “Dana H.”), has an affectlessness that only magnifies the story’s emotional load. The set and props, designed by Colleen Murray, are simple too: Cale spends a good chunk of the time sitting on a high stool in front a cutout of a bull elk and a backdrop depicting an alpine landscape.
It’s a grand vista that, at first, stands in contrast to Andrew and Will’s growing intimacy. But perhaps it does match what happens to them after all: Their feelings are big as mountains, and as fearsome and as intimidating.
Blue Cowboy
Through Nov. 8 at The Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn; thebushwickstarr.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
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