High Noon West End review – Billy Crudup and Denise Gough in a suitably wild Western
- Deorah Marks
- 15 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The world premiere stage adaptation of the Oscar-winning film runs until 7 March
In 1952, Fred Zinnemann’s classic Western High Noon was released against the backdrop of the activities of the House of Un-American Activities Committee, which cut a swathe through American civil liberties in pursuit of its anti-communist purge. Its screenwriter Carl Foreman was blacklisted shortly after its release for his refusal to name names in front of the committee and didn’t work in Hollywood for another six years.
With its emphasis on one man’s battle with his conscience, his determination to stand up and do the right thing while all around are too cowardly or self-serving to support him, it has been seen as an allegory for the failure to combat McCarthyism, but it was also Ronald Reagan’s favourite film because of its emphasis on law and order.
Watching this honourable stage version by the 73-year-old screenwriter Eric Roth, fashioning his first play, on the day that President Donald Trump’s America witnessed the killing of an unarmed woman by ICE agents, its themes and relevance could not possibly be in doubt.
Indeed Roth, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for Forrest Gump, constantly plays up the contemporary significance as his Marshall Kane (played with a grave charisma and grace by Billy Crudup) decides he has to confront a lawless outlaw, returning to town on the noontime train.
Like the film, Thea Sharrock’s tightly wrought production unfolds in real time over just under two hours, with a large clock at the centre of the stage ticking down to the denouement. It begins with Kane’s marriage to the pacifist Quaker Amy (Denise Gough) in a ceremony which involves him forswearing his gun, and planning to settle down to life as a shopkeeper, before he decides he must make one last stand.
Gough, such an intelligent actress, doesn’t have quite enough to do with Amy, whose principles mean she opposes any kind of violence, though she sings beautifully in the contemporary songs by Bruce Springsteen and others that punctuate the scenes.
That’s partly because the central debates of the High Noon film, the agonised wrestling with what is truly right, are slightly muted here as the play tracks Kane’s quest for support from various groups of townspeople. Crudup, deprived of Gary Cooper’s pensive close-ups, needs one great speech to outline his position. He keeps saying he must do what he must do, but the moral thrust of the film is somehow missing.
The production (produced by Tom Cruise’s business partner Paula Wagner) is almost too well-wrought. Sharrock’s direction is thoughtful and taut while encompassing dancing (choreography by Lizzie Gee) and some realistic fights courtesy of Kate Waters. Tom Hatley’s set design of slatted walls is evocatively lit by Neil Austin to mark the changing moods and times of day.
There are terrific supporting performances too, from Rosa Salazar as Helen, dispensing wisdom and embraces even as she packs her bags to leave town, and from the disaffected deputy Harvey, played by Billy Howle with a depth of disappointment and unhappiness that almost unmoors the play.
The rest is careful and elegantly enjoyable, but lacks that emotional punch.
