Review: Flin Flon Cowboy is a story we should hear, but its preoccupation with feet limits its potential | Canada Voices

• Title: The Flin Flon Cowboy
• Created by: Ken Harrower, Erin Brandenburg and Johnny Myrm Spence
• Director: Erin Brandenburg
• Actors: Ken Harrower
• Company: Theatre Passe Muraille, produced with The Flin Flon Collective in association with Why Not Theatre
• City: Toronto
• Year: Runs to Nov. 2, 2024

Playwright, actor and songwriter Ken Harrower has a lot going on.

At 63 years old, he’s outlived his life expectancy by close to six decades – when he was born, his mother left him in a garbage can, certain her infant was incompatible with life. Doctors soon found baby Harrower and diagnosed him with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a condition that affects his joints and speech, and predicted he would not survive past the age of five.

Of course, those doctors were wrong, and in The Flin Flon Cowboy, a co-creation by Theatre Passe Muraille and The Flin Flon Collective in association with Why Not Theatre, Harrower recalls the darkest moments of his childhood and adolescence through a spangled, musical lens. Country songs about love and self-acceptance interweave with bleak confessionals about Harrower’s life in the foster care system, shuttled between families in small towns across Western Canada. Early on in the musical, we learn one foster parent coerced Harrower into performing an erotic foot massage at the age of 13: It’s far from the last time we’ll hear about his complicated relationship with men’s feet.

And ultimately, that’s where the autobiographical musical falls apart. Much of the story centres on Harrower’s foot fetish, and the means by which he’s given into his urges since the earliest moments of his coming-of-age. The issue of consent looms large over the events of Harrower’s seemingly incongruous life – as a gay man, as a disabled person, as a follower of Jesus Christ – but time and again, we see Harrower yield to his desires, seemingly without remorse.

When Harrower does eventually unpack the ways he’s harmed other men, the script glosses over an apology and barrels forward to Harrower’s first experience paying for an escort. It’s a simple, meditative scene, and out of context, it could be beautiful in its exploration of the intersection between disability and sex – but within the narrative walls of The Flin Flon Cowboy, the moment rubs against the uglier sexual encounters that precede it.

It’s worth pointing out that Harrower’s not alone onstage: He’s joined by an able-bodied narrator, played by Greg Campbell, who steps into a number of small supporting roles and helps Harrower speak during the lengthier portions of storytelling. Also onstage is STARLIGHT, who’s credited as The Flin Flon Cowboy’s artist support – they’re there to help Harrower in and out of his motorized wheelchair, and they also appear as a backup dancer and instrumentalist during the rowdier dance scenes.

As a trio, Harrower, Campbell and STARLIGHT are a pleasure to watch, well-choreographed in their efforts to take care of each other; while there’s never a doubt that Harrower himself is the titular casanova, The Flin Flon Cowboy is at its most electric when director Erin Brandenburg’s staging makes room for more people.

There’s a pearl of a play embedded into the meat of the project, but at present, the musical feels both overstuffed and under-considered. The end of the first act focuses on a social worker named Ivan Lamb, who Harrower says completely changed his life – but how? That’s not made clear. Lamb’s name echoes through the second act, and yet Lamb never fades into view as a complete person in Harrower’s mythology; that context might help anchor the play’s wispier back half.

As well, the musical element doesn’t quite feel earned – Spence leads a raucous, twang-y country band, and Harrower can carry a tune. But the songs neither advance the plot nor provide deeper insight into Harrower’s biography; at present, they pad the project out to a long two-and-a-half hours.

Where The Flin Flon Cowboy soars is in its commitment to access – touch tours are available to help visually impaired audience members experience the topography of Theatre Passe Muraille, and the play features prominent captions projected onto Jung-Hye Kim’s attractive set.

Harrower’s story is one Canadians ought to hear, and to the creative team’s credit, there’s plenty to appreciate in the play’s dramaturgy and vision. But for now, a driving storyline preoccupied with feet has pinned The Flin Flon Cowboy’s potential under its boot.

In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)