High Noon
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.Â
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.Â
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.Â
His new bride is tough, independent-minded Quaker Amy Fowler, played by the mighty Denise Gough, who imbues...
