Theatre review: High Noon

Billy Crudup has returned to the West End, which could be seen as a brave move but at least he's learned his lesson and is doing his own accent this time. And it's the most American of genres, the Western, as Eric Roth adapts the 1952 movie High Noon: Crudup plays Will Kane, the beloved sheriff of a small New Mexico town, who wants to get his oats and so has married a Quaker. Amy's (Denise Gough) beliefs mean she wouldn't agree to marry him unless he gave up his violent job, and the show opens with a double ceremony on a Sunday morning as the couple get married, followed by Will handing in his badge and gun. But no sooner has he done so than news arrives of unnamed politicians pardoning Frank Miller (understudy Noel White,) the outlaw and right-wing comic book writer who terrorised the town until Will brought him to justice five years earlier.

Now Miller's brother (Joshua Hill) and henchman (Jonah Russell) are in town ready to start their reign of terror again, and warning that Frank himself will be back for revenge on the 12pm train. And if Will fights him, his new wife will get on the same train out of town forever.

Will chooses to protect the town at the risk of losing Amy, and much of the play is taken up with his failed attempts to get literally anybody else to join a posse against the gang. Thea Sharrock's production plays out in real time (ish - unless Will's capable of teleportation there's some time jumps, and the clock dominating Tim Hatley's stage is very much playing by its own rules) and starts and ends explosively, from wedding party to shootout; but everything in between slows to a ponderous pace.

This is because most of the show is concerned with Will trying and failing to persuade the townsfolk to do the right thing for its own sake despite the personal danger. With the story kicking off because a corrupt politician unilaterally pardoned a criminal, and the theme of the town willingly sleepwalking into becoming an outlaw's personal dictatorship, there's obvious wider political points being made here. But Crudup's Will is all too convincing as the uninspiring speaker who can't rouse the town, with no sign of the dynamic leader who got the same men to form a posse five years earlier.

Among the people who support Will but not enough to actually lift a finger are his deputy Harvey (Billy Howle,) who mostly stumbles drunkenly around while wondering why he hasn't automatically been given the job as the next sheriff; and Misha Handley's Johnny, the obligatory plucky kid who just wants to join the good fight himself. One of the most memorable figures is Rosa Salazar as Helen Ramirez, the Mexican widow who's secretly one of the most powerful people in town, but who is also making a run for it now things are going down (based on the negotiation skills we see from her I'm not sure quite how she built her business empire, but maybe that's a topical reference as well.)

Gough is a bit wasted as the character who mainly has to go around quietly putting forward controversial opinions about murder being a bad thing even if the person committing it has a badge; but then again they probably did need a high-calibre actress to pull off an ending of "I'm having an existential breakdown after betraying everything I stand for BUT ALSO I'M HORNY." High Noon looks great, and thanks to Chris Egan's music sounds great, but the clock over the stage soon stops being a metaphor for urgency: That urgency isn't really felt on stage and the clock becomes something you just want to see tick closer to the end.

High Noon by Eric Roth, based on the film script by Carl Foreman, is booking until the 6th of March at the Harold Pinter Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.