Tony/BAFTA-Nominated Mike Faist Channels Cowboy Energy for Stage Version of 'Brokeback Mountain'

"Brokeback Mountain" has been a short story, an Oscar-winning film, an opera, and this year a play with music currently playing in London's West End. Giving star-power to the play, written by by Ashley Robinson with songs by Dan Gillespie Sells from Annie Proulx's short story, are Hollywood actors Mike Faist as Jack and Lucas Hedges as Ennis. On film, the roles were played by Oscar nominees Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. Faist and Hedges are making their West End debuts in the production that runs through August 12 at @sohoplace. (For more information, visit the venue's website.)

For Faist, who was nominated for a Tony for "Dear Evan Hansen" and aa BAFTA for playing Riff in Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story," the idea of adapting Proulx's story to the stage "sounded like a bad idea." But then, he added, laughing, "I read the script," he told the British newspaper The Telegram.

"Playwright Ashley Robinson draws less on the film than on Proulx's original story to explore the intense, intimate relationship between two young men hired to herd sheep for the summer of 1963 in the wilds of Wyoming," writes The Telegram. "Jack Twist (played by Gyllenhaal in the film and Faist on stage) is a reckless rodeo rider who initiates the physical relationship between the pair, while the quiet Ennis Del Mar (Lucas Hedges taking on the role played on screen by Ledger) is more confused and distressed by his feelings."

For inspiration, Faist turned to a Hollywood icon: James Dean. "You look at his life, how short and on fire it was. Live fast and die young really was his philosophy. He had such a deep well of gifts to offer in that gorgeous, magnetic way, but he took all the risks and he just didn't care. And then there's his sexuality..."

"Dean," the Telegram continues, "had sexual relationships with both men and women," something that "was covered up at the time of his death, aged 24, in 1955.

"When asked about his sexuality, he [Dean] famously replied: 'I'm not going through life with one hand tied behind my back,' " the Telegraph recalled. "Like the Marlboro Man, he had become a pin-up for straight American masculinity, while the truth was much more complicated."

Faist, who grew up in Ohio to adoptive parents, got the acting bug after seeing Gene Kelly in "Singin' in the Rain." "I wanted the umbrella and the lamp post. I wanted the music. I wanted all of that magic. Then I saw Harrison Ford in 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,' chasing a tank on a horse, and I was certain that's what I wanted to do." He adds, "just figured: Why not me?"

To pursue his dream, he moved to New York at 18 to attend drama school, but dropped out to pursue auditions. Things were difficult, though; at one point he "scraped a living selling tickets in Times Square and briefly lived in the parking lot of a McDonald's," the newspaper recounted. More recently, he sold his NYC residence "and bought a truck that he shares with his 65lb. mixed-breed dog, Austin.

"Faist skirts other questions about his personal life and claims not to remember the first time he got his heart broken," the Telegraph continues. "In his mid-20s he shared photographs of his then-girlfriend (dancer Alexis Tilly Evans-Krueger) but now prefers to keep off social media."

"I wasn't such a risk taker in my mid-20s," the actor reflected. "But something changed during the pandemic, maybe. I think grief teaches us a lot. Once you've really experienced grief for the first time, everything kicks into perspective. You stop stressing about how other people perceive you – which is out of your control anyway – and start choosing to do the things that light you up."

Asked if he feels homophobia is on the rise in the United States after Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill and an ongoing onslaught on drag culture by conservatives, Faist told the newspaper, "We evolve and we don't – that's the sad reality."

Added the actor: "Just a few days after I flew back from my first visit to this theatre there was a shooting at a gay club in Denver." ("Five people were killed by a man who claimed he wanted to 'cleanse society" of homosexuality,' " the Telegraph contextualized.) "I don't think we'll ever get there. Not in my lifetime. But we can do better and that's what we can hope for..."

"As for the sex scenes, Faist refuses to tell me how those will be handled," the Telegraph recounted, but he said he isn't too concerned if an overzealous fan should snap pics of them.

"Life is weird," the actor said. "People are weird. Good people forget to turn off phones. We're humans, we f--- up. Who cares? It is just a play.

"In an ideal world," he added, "we would like people in that intimate space to respect the communal experience. If we can all get out of our own heads for 90 minutes, then it's the most present we might all be all day. So, just don't be a dick."

Check out pics from Faist's IG: