Bronco Billy is one of Clint Eastwood’s ropier westerns, from a time when he was sending up his Man With No Name persona. Released in 1980, in between two comedies where his co-star was an orangutan called Clyde, the film follows a grizzled sharpshooter whose ramshackle wild west troupe provides shelter for a runaway heiress. It’s a screwy caper boosted by the chemistry between Eastwood and Sondra Locke (who were offscreen partners) and eccentric support from his stock company of actors.
This flimsier musical version, with a book by original screenwriter Dennis Hacklin, isn’t short on star quality: the magnetic Tarinn Callender is Billy, his megawatt smile matched by Emily Benjamin’s as heiress Antoinette, while Victoria Hamilton-Barritt wrings delightful detail from the expanded role of Antoinette’s stepmother. All three are brilliantly talented singers – if only they had songs that went beyond these perfectly pleasant, often anodyne numbers about living your dreams by Chip Rosenbloom, John Torres and Michele Brourman.
“There’s a world out there that has lost its way,” sings ringmaster Doc (Karen Mavundukure) at the start. Billy purveys homespun values with his family-friendly shows but they are cash-strapped so – in a diversion from the film’s plot – the gang head for Hollywood to enter a TV talent competition. Eastwood’s taciturn Billy would have grimaced at the suggestion, devoted as he is to putting on goodwill free shows for the community. The musical skips those scenes, cleans up some of his chequered backstory, plays down any genuine tension and danger, and queasily accelerates the comedy. The occasional tender, quieter episodes are sandwiched in between madcap shenanigans as a surfeit of antagonists hunt down Antoinette.
Hunter Bird’s restlessly exuberant production has fired the confetti cannon within minutes and Amy Jane Cook’s revolve set design spins regularly from circus truck to jail to apartment. The 1979 setting means there’s a dose of disco and funk added to the country score and Sarah Mercadé’s colourful costume design gives Henry Maynard, as the clown Lefty Lebow, an outsize Stetson and a pierrot smock. But while we see a few circus tricks and some illusions (by John Bulleid), often incorporated into the plot rather than the troupe’s own show, there is little in the way of big-top spectacle and Alexzandra Sarmiento’s choreography seems reined in. Actors frequently leave the stage to exit and enter through doors in the auditorium but don’t create any immersion in the story which remains distant.
What’s missing most is a real sense of the troupe’s wear and tear – not just their hard-scrabble past but that of the wild west itself. All that came for free with Eastwood’s casting and Billy’s lived-in, country and western-style wisdom in the film was reinforced through a duet with co-star Merle Haggard. The musical’s central romance is rarely combustible and neither are the troupe – everyone is too darn sunny. Aficionados of Hamilton-Barritt’s line in venal stepmothers will relish her scenes – all silks, snarls and piercing screams – but unfortunately this musical misfires.
At Charing Cross theatre, London, until 7 April
