With Alistair McGowan, Doon Mackichan and Ben Miller

Jack Dee, Alistair McGowan, Doon Mackichan and Ben Miller are to star in a new comedy musical about a cowboy re-enactment club.

Midlife Cowboy is written and directed by comedian Tony Hawks and will be introduced by Graham Norton when it is previewed as a charity benefit 'read and sing through' at the Lyric Theatre in London on April 25.

McGowan plays Stu, water filter salesman by day, president of the Swindon Cowboy Club by night, where he dresses up as the Heartbreak Kid during gunfight re-enactments and performances by their country music band.

Each year the club gigs at the Swindon Railway Museum's gala day, but are beaten into second place for the mayor's prize by the local Civil War re-enactment society. So after ten years, he's more determined than ever to win.

Unfortunately, Stu's obsession is masking his feelings of inadequacy about his job and marriage to Jane (played by opera singer and McGowan's real-life wife Charlotte Page). She loves dressing up as Lil, a bar-room tart, but fears the club has lost its purpose.

'Stuart is close to a breakdown and his wife has lost his way too,' Hawks told Chortle.

Dee is Clive, a new member of the club who snogs 'Lil' during a re-enactment, much to Stu's anger, while Miller is the nerdy and subservient bachelor Graham, who falls hopelessly in love with feisty, eccentric auditionee Penny (Mackichan), who has designs on something other than winning the prize.

Hawks, who began his career as a singer-songwriter and reached number four in the UK charts as part of Morris Minor and Majors with their Beastie Boys parody, Stutter Rap, says that Midlife Cowboy's songs are 'mostly country in feel' and that he's seeking to get a regional theatre to produce and stage it, with a view to then bringing it back to London's West End for a full run.

All proceeds from the preview will go to The Tony Hawks Centre in Moldova, which provides rehabilitative therapy for disabled children from vulnerable families, in association with ChildAid.

As part of the show, Norton will also interview Hawks about his work with the centre, which he set up after writing his second book, Playing The Moldovans at Tennis, the result of a drunken bet with Arthur Smith that he couldn't beat each member of the Moldovan national football team in a game of tennis.

Tickets for the benefit are available here. And you can donate to the Tony Hawks Centre here.

- by Jay Richardson.

Published: 21 Mar 2016