I’m always wary of those theatre reviews that, when faced with a stage adaptation of a classic film, conclude sniffily that for a tiny fraction of the price of a ticket, potential viewers would do far better to download the original picture instead. And yet, I am about counsel doing exactly the same, not least because High Noon (quadruple Oscar winner in 1952) is an outstanding film that more than merits an hour and a half of anyone’s (re)watching time. It’s a western unlike any other: mean, moody, moralistic and magnificent.
On stage, in this new adaptation by Oscar winner Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), High Noon is resolutely none of these things. If asked to select an actor to take on the role immortalised by Gary Cooper, that of upstanding town marshal Will Kane, I doubt many would place Billy Crudup near the top of their wish list. Crudup has none of the stature nor demeanour of Cooper; whilst the latter was strong and silent, Crudup, as exemplified by his fine work as Cory Ellison on Apple TV’s The Morning Show, is a talker – and a fast one at that. Too often here, Crudup sounds like nothing more than a desperate door-to-door salesman.
This new adaption by Eric Roth really failed to deliver (Photo: Johan Persson)A large clock hangs above the stage and counts down in ominous real time to midday, when the noon train will bring just-released prisoner and big-time gangster Frank Miller back to the small outback town that Marshal Kane has painstakingly cleaned up during his 17 years wearing the silver star of office. It’s a busy day all round, as Kane is quitting his duties and marrying Amy Fowler (Denise Gough), a dedicated Quaker and pacifist; their plan is to leave town and run a store together. However Miller’s imminent arrival means that a reckoning is inevitably due and thus High Noon asks the simple, scorching question: who will stand with Kane on the side of right?
There are inescapable echoes of America’s current political turmoil in Roth’s script, with its theme of confronting the big, bad bullies, as well as men’s perennial recourse to violence.
“This whole damn country – you let liars and cowards become heroes,” says Kane, in a line he might not wish to repeat in the vicinity of the contemporary White House. Nonetheless, it’s the two female characters who provide the heart and soul of this piece: Gough does fine work as a principled woman grappling with strongly held convictions (she also sings snatches of a handful of plangent ballads), while Rosa Salazar is a straight-talking but passionate Mexican businesswoman – as well as a former lover of both Kane’s and Frank Miller’s.
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Thea Sharrock’s production, which unfolds on a set of slatted wooden panels, has little sense of a ratcheting up of tension as the clock ticks down; it also cannot begin to compete with the film’s mighty denouement, a minutes-long shootout around a now hauntingly empty town.
As for Cooper’s iconic, acerbic final gesture, one of celluloid’s most memorable moments, there’s none of that here. Much as I hate to say it, save your money and watch the film instead.
Runs to 6 March (highnoontheplay.com).
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