Brighton Fringe 2026
Cowpokes in a Bunkhouse
Oblique Theatre
Genre: Absurd Theatre, Comedic, Drama, Experimental, Feminist Theatre, Physical Theatre, Theatre
Venue: The Rossi Bar. 8 Queens road, Brighton
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
When Kit came back after the interval, he heard the applause and remarked – “I didn’t know hooves could make that sound.” But they can – and they can type, too, which is how I’m writing this so I can tell you how about forty of us cows were crammed into the basement of the Rossi Bar. Really small seats down there, so we were jammed together like livestock in a cattle truck.
Review
The show’s title mentions a bunkhouse, but there were no bunks – just a pallet with some cushions and a single chair on the acting space in front of us, and a constant sound of lowing from the cows in the background, as we watched the three cowpokes blame each other for their shortcomings, before trying to get some sleep on the impossibly uncomfortable furniture,
Kit, Judd and Buck argued constantly about how each of them had broken the rules of the Ranch, and how they’d be in trouble with ‘The Big Man’ when he would eventually arrive. The set was bare except for a few items hanging on a washing line against the back wall – and a dartboard with a picture of The Big Man in the middle. Judd spent some time throwing darts at his image, making it clear that the three hate their Boss, as well as fearing him. But would he ever come? I was reminded of ‘Waiting for Godot’ . . .
A lot of the delight of this show is because the three (male) cowboys are all played by women. Faith McNeill and Saskia Montiero have written them BIG; and Tia Chipperfield as Judd, Amelia Leigh as Buck, and Lily McCaffrey as Kit, played them even BIGGER – and they swaggered across the stage in their cowboy jeans, overalls and ten-gallon hats. Stained workwear, and dirt on their faces, too; with broad American accents from Texas, or someplace like that: deep in the Southwest.
Loud. None of your simpering female delicacy here – these guys were the real deal, as they shouted insults back and forth, and fought each other fiercely. Bluff and brash – they punched and wrestled, threw one another across the stage and sometimes waved around a (small) Bowie knife in a truly threatening fashion. At one point Buck (whose knife it was) sat on the floor and stabbed rhythmically between his fingers, faster and faster. I winced – and I could feel the ‘bovine’ audience member in the next seat doing the same . . .
Judd was apparently the oldest: keen to follow the ‘rules of the Ranch’. At several points he made the three of them line up and recite them – “Keep your tools clean …”
Buck was very keen to be the Alpha male of the three. Amelia Leigh made ‘his’ voice powerful and demanding. Macho, too: when he wasn’t gripping Judd’s neck or hair we got a lot of groin action as Buck gripped his own balls . . .
Kit was the ‘boy’ of the group. Probably the youngest, but the least assertive, and in this kind of society men use the word ‘Boy’ to address anyone they consider their social – or racial – inferior.
It wasn’t just about the fights, either. Movement Coordinator Jess Harris made full use of the acting space as an arena for the ‘guys’ to do a kind of barn dance in front of us at one point. At other times, they loomed over those of us in the front row, as they came to the edge of the stage to tell us something important, or to calm the herd and try to get us cows back to sleep.
Absurd theatre. Surreal theatre. But also very funny theatre. There were gales of laughter from us cows as we listened to the cowboys’ arguing with each other – big egos and big swinging dicks. We never see The Big Man, of course, but at one point Judd role-plays him to prepare Buck for his eventual interview with his employer. (A confession – that speech is never going to cut it as a management training aid . . .)
As well as recounting their problems with The Big Man. They told stories, too. In fact they told what’s essentially the same story three times – different versions depending on the teller. Buck was first, with Judd acting out the part of the young boy Frank, sitting on the floor squashing bugs. He has a brother, Howard, and their mother is dying. “Why did Mama die?” “Because the world is unfair!” Mama died in Judd’s tale too, though you’ll have to watch ‘Cowpokes’ yourselves to see what happens, and the difference in this telling. It was left to Kit to (finally) give us a happy ending in his rendering.
Maybe that’s the point of this production. Like in life – nothing in theatre is fixed. Different observers tell different versions of the same events; characters who are men are in fact women in reality; the bunkhouse is actually the basement of the Rossi Bar; and we the audience were cows for only as long as the show lasted. It’s the magic of theatre – and it can be summed up in three words:
Trust The Audience.
We the company will tell you a story, and we trust that you the audience will choose to believe it – choose to see, in your own imagination, what we are telling you is happening in front of you.
Faith McNeill and Saskia Montiero understand this perfectly. They’ve not only given us three clearly drawn characters, and engaged the musical group The Roebucks to produce some well judged original music to accompany the action – they’ve also given us ‘The Big Man’. We never see him, of course. He’s offstage, somewhere on the Ranch – which we don’t see either – but because of these two writers’ skill, his presence pervades and influences everything that happens onstage.
Strat Mastoris
