Sam Shepard wrote Cowboy Mouth (1971) with Patti Smith while they were having an affair during his prolific and manic early years in the East Village when he was part of the off-off Broadway scene. Shepard has described his one-act plays of this period as “impulsive chronicles”, “slightly embarrassing” with hindsight, but unapologetically churned out while “learning how to write”.
Surprising then that despite it being belaboured with private symbolism for Shepard and Smith, how enduring is its energy, and how easily each subsequent generation identifies with this angst-ridden, graffiti script and its discombobulated protagonists. This time around, it speaks thanks to good performances, but mostly to Christopher Weare’s lucid and coherent design and direction.
In the twilight zone of a detritus ridden room, Slim (Nicholas Pauling at his best), a downtrodden, volatile, would-be rock star, oscillates between worshipping and cursing his mistress and co-habitant Cavale (Tinarie Van Wyk Loots), an ugly duckling outpatient from a mental asylum with a club foot and a crow for a pet. Their frustrated aspiration for fame and fortune and their failure to find messianic redemption through rock ’n roll or some mythic figure such as Jim Morrison’s Lizard King, inevitably prefigures the calamity of their relationship.
Philosophically flimsy and intellectually unsatisfying, the play nevertheless succeeds with sinuous dialogue and poetry as powerful as the disembodied imagery of its title (borrowed from Bob Dylan). The project continues for each successive generation to create a God in their image.
