Theatre review: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Some genres barely ever get seen on stage, and you can definitely count the Western among them. So even though I've never really been a fan of Western films, spaghetti or otherwise, I was interested to see what Jethro Compton would do with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and it turned out to be a great decision. When young lawyer Ransome Foster (Oliver Lansley) embarks on an ill-thought-out journey to the West, he ends up beaten up by outlaws in the middle of nowhere, and needing rescuing. Rance ends up recuperating in a saloon in the tiny town of Twotrees, where he falls for the landlady, Hallie (Niamh Walsh.) As an excuse to stay for a while, he agrees to teach Hallie and some of the locals to read, but his top student is Jim (Lanre Malaolu,) and the local outlaw gang led by Liberty Valance (James Marlowe) aren't too happy about a black man getting an education.

Theatre review: Twelve Angry Men

There's lots of shows opening in the West End right now and for a moment I thought tonight's had got a bit confused: The sound effect of a speeding train over the opening made me wonder if I'd rocked up at the Hitchcock adaptation a week early. But the sound turns out to be on-theme for this stage transfer of another famous film, which Reginald Rose adapted from his own 1954 screenplay. The Twelve Angry Men in question are the jury in a murder case, twelve white men deciding whether a black teenager stabbed his father in the middle of the night. Eleven jurors immediately cast their guilty vote but Juror 8 (Television's Martin Shaw) has reasonable doubt, and asks only that the rest take the time to discuss the case before condemning a man to death. The evidence is largely circumstantial but there's a lot of it - yet it turns out to be easier to poke holes in than the perfunctory defence made it look in court.