Putting a film western on stage is an odd idea that doesn’t seem any less odd having seen High Noon, an adaptation of the classic allegorical 1952 movie starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly.
It’s an impressive show in a lot of ways. Thea Sharrock’s direction deftly conjures a dusty desert town using flexible sets, lovely period costumes (from Tim Hatley) and some sparse but effective gun slingin’. It’s theatrical, too, in the sense that the cast sing a lot more Bruce Springsteen songs than they did in the film, and an ever-present clock implacably ticks down to the title time.
And it’s got two sensational leads. I wasn’t really a massive fan of Billy Crudup’s recent one-man show Harry Clarke. But he’s the best thing about High Noon as the vulpine Sheriff Will Kane, who begins the story marrying and reluctantly hanging up his badge before he’s hauled out of retirement almost immediately upon the news that jailed outlaw Frank Miller has been released from prison and is on the noon train to town, hellbent on revenge.
Crudup is not a physically imposing man, and is older than Cooper was, but it’s his steely intensity combined with a sense of genuine vulnerability that binds the show together, as he tries and largely fails to form a posse to oppose Miller. The townsfolk are either seeking to avoid danger or have actively fallen out with the upright but abrasive lawman.
His new bride is tough, independent-minded Quaker Amy Fowler, played by the mighty Denise Gough, who imbues the character with an almost fanatical opposition to violence, and also sings Springsteen’s ‘I’m on Fire’ exquisitely.
Both leads are formidable, charismatic presences who make the roles their own and fairly comprehensively do a different thing to Cooper and Kelly.
But is this story really a play? The adaptation is the first ever stage work from Eric Roth, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of *deep breath* Forrest Gump, The Insider, Munich, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Star Is Born and Dune. He does change stuff about the film, and what is most noticeable is that he’s altered the allegorical meaning. Formerly it was a broadside at the Hollywood blacklist and a lack of solidarity in the industry with regards to the Red Scare. Now it’s fairly clear that Miller is a Trump proxy, and the townsfolk’s complicated array of reasons for not opposing him – ranging from self-interest to self-preservation – are broadly in line with the reasons US voters gave Trump a second turn. Even Miller’s imprisonment and release – unfathomable to Kane – seems to broadly tally with the failure to meaningfully punish Trump after January 6 et al.
All well and good but it still cleaves close to the structure of the film and that just doesn’t quite cut it on the stage. Magnetic as Crudup is, and solid as the gunplay bits are, none of it can negate the fact that the story ends weirdly abruptly – it needs a much longer final act. Gough is great, but she’s playing an amped up version of a relatively small character and the part doesn’t really justify an actor of her towering abilities. Crudup is undoubtedly the lead, and there’s a feeling that some of the songs etc are just there to find Gough something to do. By genre standards, it’s pretty talkie, but I really think an extra 15 minutes or so of really meaty dialogue might have pushed this thing over the top.
It’s entertaining, looks great, has a superb cast and Bruce Springsteen songs. These are all good things, as is the seamlessness with which the central allegory is updated. But it still feels a lot like a screenplay plonked on a stage. High Noon the film is an all time classic. High Noon the play is an entertaining curio.
