The Flin Flon Cowboy: "you can do anything you want to do but it might be harder for you"
25 Oct 2024 - Photos courtesy of The Flin Flon Cowboy Collective

You can do anything you want to do but it might be harder for you

How best to present the autobiography of a "disabled, gay guy with addiction and mental health issues and a foot fetish," and as The Flin Flon Cowboy himself chimes in, "And horny too." A musical might seem an unlikely format, but The Flin Flon Cowboy presents the story of renaissance man/activist Ken Harrower (Access Me, Luk'Luk'l) as song and dance but with none of the rough edges scrubbed clean. There is a remarkable lack of self-pity, no wish fulfillment happy ending, and a powerful emotional wallop, several actually, far beyond the effect of a standard 11 o'clock number. Harrower's story is harrowing and filled with enough content warnings to scare off a Broadway audience, but it is presented with humour, clever and concise visuals, and with a touching diva anti-hero performance at its core. Born with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita—he suggests you "google it"—he was promptly discarded in a garbage can. From there his life became a series of foster homes, hospitals, the only gay bar in Winnipeg, the YMCA, attempted suicides, homelessness, and anything but the institutions that society wanted to consign him to.

Co-creators Harrower, Erin Brandenburg (who also directs) and Johnny Myrum Spence (who co-wrote the songs and is the music director) present the story as a series of vignettes that slowly link into the basic thematic elements of religious repression, escaping the closet, the challenges of "being in a chair," and feet. The band—Spence, Mara Nesrallah, Steven Foster and Laura Palumbo—wander in and out of the onstage action and provide a near continuous underscore. Harrower's time fostered with Mennonites and Baptists bring a seasoning of gospel to the mostly country and western flavoured songs, while also providing a powerful metaphor that ties the entire show together. Of course any musical with a gay protagonist requires a disco number, and the dance-along "Freedom Dance" is not only catchy but cathartic. Nesrallah contributes gorgeous vocals to "Italian David," a number that, like the show in general, operates on multiple levels: simultaneously hauntingly romantic and bitterly melancholic. The band also contributes multi-tiered but subtle background vocals to support Harrower's strained and struggling vocals. Organic Autotune to facilitate accessibility to a story that might otherwise not be told.

The co-creators had to figure out a way to present a musical with a star with limited mobility, limited vocal ability, and who has to work very hard to get sentences out. The solutions include surtitles, Harrower's own charisma, the aforementioned vocal assistance, and two MVPs. Starlight (xLq, The Youth/Elders Project) is billed as "Artist Support, Ensemble" but also contributes a suggestive and swaggering trombone solo. Starlight provides Harrower with props and assistance, but also plays, with flamboyant glee, a series of gay men that are sex objects, mildly sympathetic, or as casually dastardly as those who menaced Tanya McQuoid. Delightful and hilarious eye candy with heart. Greg Campbell (The Cold War, Out, Heart of Steel, Firebrand) introduces himself as the narrator, a role in which he supplements and enhances the surtitles, but he also, as he himself gripes across the fourth wall, plays "50 or so characters." Campbell is a nimble chameleon who takes infectious joy in transforming into everything from a butch cowboy social worker to an "evil" social worker in stilettos to a fire and brimstone preacher to a compassionate and erotic escort. All while carefully yielding the spotlight to Harrower and gently prodding the star with lines and cues to keep the show on track. If it was not so self-effacing and giving, it would be a star making performance.

The injections of theatricality and music make the tough parts of The Flin Flon Cowboy easier to digest, but there were still many times when the silence and tension in the audience was palpable. Harrower does not shy away from the less savory aspects of his life, nor from a brutally honest sexual awakening. While the audience can't help but root for him, there are issues of generational abuse and consent. To The Flin Flon Cowboy's credit, it is tackled head on and Harrower is flayed bare in an emotionally raw section that is both breathtaking and disturbing. And that intersects with Harrower's own battle to come out into a community that bases inclusion on attributes he will never be able to flaunt. It is nervy and important writing, presentation and performance that exhilarates and unnerves. There is often a discrepancy with the surtitles as Harrower encounters syntactical difficulties that are sometimes related to his disabilities, and sometimes when written text can't convey the colloquial speech of his heart. Where his extraordinary ability to communicate smashes up against his physical limitations and the limitations of the English language. The opening lyric sings "We all roll through life without thinking of what others are going through," but when Harrower rolls onstage, flashing neon adorning his chair, he draws us in to what he has gone through. Is going through. And yes, it was harder for him but emphatically demonstrates that "you can do anything you want."