The Feeling’s Dan Gillespie Sells talks to Chris Evans about the new stage adaptation of Brokeback Mountain

Virgin Radio

2 May 2023, 10:38

Dan Gillespie Sells joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch to talk about writing the music for a new stage adaptation of Brokeback Mountain.

Speaking about the new production, which plays at Soho Place in London from the 10th May, Dan told Chris: “It's a beautiful story, it's beautifully acted, and there's a wonderful live band playing and telling you this story.”

Brokeback Mountain was originally written as a short story by Annie Proulx in 1997, and then was adapted into what Dan describes as “an extraordinary movie” in 2005 starring Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, and Michelle Williams, and directed by Ang Lee. Referring to Proulx’s novella, the frontman of The Feeling said: “She wrote it as a part of a series of stories about rural Wyoming. And this one particular story happens to be about two men who are kind of cowboys in a place called Brokeback Mountain, and they basically ended up herding sheep, because they couldn't get a better job, and they ended up on their own on the mountain, and they fall in love. 

“It follows them for 30 years of them getting married, having normal families as you would in rural Wyoming, but continuing this relationship. And one of them, Jack, wants to go further with it, and for them to shack up together. But Ennis is terrified, because he knows how brutal that society is, particularly in the 1960s in rural Wyoming.” 

Dan continued: “It's about that, but it's actually a tragedy, you know, that's what's so wonderful. It's kind of a beautiful love story, but also a terrible tragedy at the same time. And what's interesting for me about it is that these characters are so different from us, you know, these characters, we forget what it's like, to not be us. And that's what the theatre is great at doing, is presenting a whole other life that you can get involved in. These people are of the earth, the dirt is under their fingernails, they've been working with cattle and working with the land, and they've grown up that way, bull riding and all that kind of stuff. And then suddenly, they just fall in love with each other, and they're so confused about it, and so terrified of it.”

The production is billed as a play with music, and will star Mike Faist as Jack and Lucas Hedges as Ennis, with Dan’s songs performed by singer Eddi Reader and her onstage band. “In musicals, generally the characters sing, but with Jack and Eniss, our two lead characters, there's no way in the world that they could sing. They don't have an inner landscape, they don't really have a kind of inner dialogue, as well as they don't really even talk to each other about anything particularly deep. You know, there they are, those kinds of blokes,” Dan explained. 

“So, for them to burst into song we just knew was going to be kind of funny, in a way that we didn't want it to be, and just wasn't right for the characters. And so we thought we needed music, because we needed to somehow deliver time passing, seasons changing, a sense of the landscape, a sense of the place that they're in and a sense of the scale of it all, as well as like an interior landscape. So we knew we needed songs to do it. So we had the idea of having a balladeer, an Earth Mother kind of character and a country band. So we called Eddi Reader up and convinced her. We put on the absolute charm offensive to get Eddi to come and do it. 

“She's such a spiritual creature and she has this extraordinary voice. And she was like, ‘I live in Glasgow, and I've got my cats, and I've got the boys to look after, and I've got all of this stuff going on, and I've got another album coming.’ And we were like, ‘No, please come to London, please come and do this show'. And she heard the songs and then decided she was going to do it. And we also have a guy called BJ Cole playing pedal steel guitar. Now, BJ played guitar on Scott Walker's record. So the Walker Brothers’ No Regrets, that's BJ Cole. Tiny Dancer, that's BJ Cole playing pedal steel guitar on that record. 

“Any great kind of pop record you'll hear with the pedal steel guitar, it's probably BJ playing it. He's come to play in the band with us. We've got harmonica, and upright bass, all live in the theatre. 

Dan added: “It's country music which really does deliver you a sense of place and especially with these musicians, and I grew up listening to country music, so it felt very natural for me to write it.”

When conversation turned to Dan’s band, The Feeling, he said: “When we do a Feeling album, it's the only time that I go, ‘What do I want to say?’. Normally I'm writing for a character, I'm writing for a situation, storytelling, I'm writing for whatever, or I'm scoring something which is cinematic or whatever. But if I'm doing something where it's like, ‘What do I have to say?’, that's when I do a feeling album.”

Brokeback Mountain begins 10th May at Soho Place. Tickets available now at sohoplace.org.

For more great interviews listen to  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.