By Kat Mokrynski

Spoiler Warning: Major spoilers for Brokeback Mountain are included in this article!

“My part is to give emotional ballast to what they all can’t say to each other – They’re unable to communicate love and they’re unable to get rid of their fear. And in the end, it has its consequences.”

Brokeback Mountain, starring Mike Faist and Lucas Hedges, is currently playing at SoHo Place, telling audiences the story of young lovers, Jack and Ennis. Recently, I had the chance to speak with Eddi Reader, who is playing the role of the Balladeer in the show. We discussed the role of music in Brokeback Mountain, what makes the story so relevant, and how Reader connects with the story as both a performer and a person.

So how did you first get involved with this production of Brokeback Mountain?

I’d gotten involved because I decided to pack it in for the summer of this year and I thought, “I’ll try and write an album.” And then I started a PhD! So I was hoping to have the whole year with nothing in it, but I realized I would get bored. Maybe I attracted it into the universe, but I got an email from Jonathan Butterell, who then said he would consider talking to me about this rule of the Balladeer in Brokeback Mountain. And I knew the film and I loved the film. I thought, “That’s interesting, but I’m not sure who these people are, or if they would approach it in a way that I would think was tasteful.” But my sister then said, “Jonathan Butterell’s great! He did this and he did that! Okay, so this sounds like serious people. And then Dan [Gillespie] Sell’s music. My younger sister said, “He’s in a band called The Feeling, they’re really good! [Laughs] There was a lot of things in the balance – This is going to be good, but I didn’t really know until I talked to them. They wanted somebody who was like a mother figure, Eternal Mother of the universe looking and seeing people on stage love. 

We get a bit thrown over by our feelings and our fears. And everyone on stage has it – The boss, Aguirre, the Ennis character, Jack, and also the wife, Alma. They all have deeply embedded fear that they can’t quite shake. Ennis has it worst of all, and Annie Proulx, the writer, has written a part for an older man. So there’s Paul Hickey, who plays older Ennis, and he’s really overseeing the memory of what happened and what happened when he found out the tragedy at the end. My part is to give emotional ballast to what they all can’t say to each other – They’re unable to communicate love and they’re unable to get rid of their fear. And in the end, it has its consequences.

I think that Jonathan Butterell and Ashley Robinson, who wrote the script, they’ve created a Brechtian working poor play, one of those plays that’s talking to people that are really ordinary in that way – Extraordinary in their ordinariness. They’ve been overwhelmed by the beauty that is love and the environment of Brokeback Mountain, – How Brokeback Mountain was all-forgiving and all nurturing – And then they just blew it! [Laughs] They just couldn’t live with it. So there was the beauty  of the actual spiritual piece, and then the songs on top helped me soften my own heart. I can only speak for me but as a 63-year-old woman, when I watch it, I’m watching people who are my son’s age. I believe that you can’t see this play without breaking your heart a little bit and softening your heart. Maybe nowadays it’s a good story to tell because the prejudices are a little less, they’re not as exacting as they were in the 90s. So, now feels like a good time to tell the story again, on a true story. It’s basically how idiotic it is that we cannot get through this life without confronting fear, or hiding from fear, or trying to manage fear.

Can you go into a little more detail about your role as the Balladeer within the show?

Yeah! She’s a bit cynical – She has an edge to her. She’s not affected by the darkness that’s affecting everyone else. And she’s overseeing it and she’s loving them – She loves the boys and the girls. She loves Alma, she loves innocent Jack, she loves older Ennis, even Aguirre! She’s a bit annoyed at Aguirre, the boss, and annoyed at the stories that the boys tell of their fathers and what the fathers did to them, how the fathers exposed them to fear at an early age. She’s someone who represents the landscape and the Eternal Mother, the Good Mother, the one that we all want that is all-forgiving and all-loving. So, that’s what I’m reaching for when I strap on the guitar and I put the wig on. Sometimes I’m a horse in my head! Sometime I’m the nature of the coyotes screaming in the wind. 

I was worried about what they wanted done, because I had a hit record and a triple platinum album when I was 30, the age of the boys. So, I remember thinking, “Oh, you want some woman that’s from way back then?” And they said, “No, we’ve been watching you perform these past 10 years, and we know what you do. You storytell – You get this real emotional impact. And so I said to them, “As long as the work is good!” And Dan then provided me with non-cliched work, which is taken from Annie Proulx’s prose. So there are lines from all the songs that have her in it, like, “Every soul that’s been here before is offered up on the stony shore,” which is what we are, as humans – We’re here, we get offered up as entities, and, as Hank Williams says, “No one gets out of this world alive.” So it’s a good theme, this play. It’s nothing to do with whether you’ve got a willy or tits – It’s to do with connection and your soul and how we can’t hear it because fear can be too loud. That’s what it’s about. That’s what the Balladeer’s role is – To represent their souls.

So how does the music play a role?

As I said, they are highly emotive. “Hale Strew River” is like a prayer to me. The first verse is describing the scenery using a lot of Annie Proulx’s actual lyricism, and then Dan shoved it into a beautiful plea for forgiveness. And the second verse, it’s saying, “Let’s use it as a prayer. You know, “Let’s use the air as a kiss. Let’s use the water moving as some kind of blessing to us all.” And also, the chorus is, “Please take me back. Take me down. Take me there. Take me to that place where all is peace, and all is joy, and all is calm, and all is meditative beauty.” And that’s where I want to live. So there’s a lot of music that deals with that. That one and “Coyote.” 

“Coyote” is very about the fear, the fear of Aguirre, the boss comes in. That’s Martin Marquez, he plays Aguirre, and Jack’s dad, and he also plays Bill the grocer, the kindest gentleman in the whole play. He’s the one that’s wanting to bring peace. The “Coyote” song happens after Aguirre has spied them with his binoculars, and he’s got this whole, “I’ve got you and you can get lost”  and “How dare you?” He’s got that guilt and shame that he wants to spoon-feed the little boys. And then after he goes, I sing “Coyote,” because he’s the coyote – He’s the darkness that can come for your throat. And that’s what fear is. Words can never convey it as well as when you listen to the feeling. So the feeling of the song. . . You could sing it in any language, and you’d get the feeling of it. It’s a plea, or this is what he’s about. That’s fear there and it’s animalistic. It’s going to eat you alive, it’s going to ruin your life. And of course, Ennis’s life is absolutely ruined. He’s given up the biggest love of his life and he’s never really known how to recover.

Why do you think that Brokeback Mountain has remained so popular since it was first published?

I think because human beings of all kinds have that story in their lives. In a sense, the reason the story works is because it’s a universal story about the human condition, and how challenge can completely expand us. Or if we fear it, it can reduce us. And I think the choice between reduction or expansion is a very human story. Millions of human beings come here to experience that at all times. The news is the same as it was in 1901. The wars are the same. The battles between our feelings are the same, the inability to understand that we create our own reality. Brokeback is telling you you’ve created your own reality – You wouldn’t do it because of fear. You wouldn’t try it out because of fear. There’s a line in it where Jack says to Ennis, “We could have had a good life.” Now, nobody really knows if they could have had a good life. But they at least would have had an authentic life for a minute, until somebody came along and murdered. But they would have had . . . Something. Ennis was very fearful of murder, being dead. As if that’s the be-all and end-all. As I’ve got older, I realized that being dead isn’t a problem. The problem is not living authentically.

What do you hope audiences take away from Brokeback Mountain?

Well, the feedback I’m getting is it’s opening their hearts a little bit to their own shame and guilt, seeing themselves in the characters and seeing themselves look at it in a different way. There’s a lot of kids coming that have never seen the film, and they’re all shocked when they find out someone dies in it. And that’s amazing, sitting on my chair with my guitars, and when Jack’s wife, Lureen, says he’s died, I can audibly hear quite a massive section go, [Gasps] When that happens to a human being, it means that first of all, it’s working on lots of levels – You’re doing something to their physiology, you’re doing something to their head, and you’re doing something to their heart and their gut – You’re changing their lives. And I think, to come and see this play, you come out a better person, a better human being, because you’ve experienced what that felt like. I mean, it took me about four months to stop crying every night! [Laughs] Now, I’m kind of alright, but I’m still in love with them. And whenever I’m playing Jack’s mother, I just see my own sons on that fence, being murdered because they fell in love with something else that wasn’t what society decides is right. Insane. Insanity. As Jesus said, this isn’t the real world. This isn’t the world that knows him.

And finally, how would you describe Brokeback Mountain in one word?

Transformative. It’s transformed me!

Brokeback Mountain runs at SoHo Place through 12 August.