One plays in the West End at the prestigious Harold Pinter Theatre and stars Billy Crudup and Denise Gough. The other plays at The Other Palace, an intimate off-West End venue, and stars Jack Holden and … well, Jack Holden.
High Noon is the prestige offering, and it’s dead on arrival. Like the West End production of Dr. Strangelove several years ago, it takes existing intellectual property and leaves one wondering: who thought this was a good idea? Each film is already perfect on its own; neither needed to be reinterpreted for the stage. (A further question, to which I have no answer, is why I thought I should buy tickets for either of these.)
To be fair, High Noon, like Dr. Strangelove, remains relevant. Writing during the McCarthy era, screenwriter Carl Foreman shaped the film as a commentary on Hollywood at a moment when studio executives readily abandoned artists who ran afoul of HUAC. Foreman himself was blacklisted, moved to London, and had his passport confiscated.
The problem is not that High Noon has nothing to say to us today, but that this production doesn’t seem to know what that is. Like the movie, it unfolds roughly in real time, as Marshall Will Kane waits for his would-be killer to arrive on the noon train. But the play generates no theatrical tension. Billy Crudup—a wonderful actor but an odd choice for the Gary Cooper role—feels more like Cory Ellison on The Morning Show than like the taciturn hero of this story. The supremely talented Denise Gough, in the Grace Kelly role, occasionally sings a line or two of Bruce Springsteen, to no apparent effect.
I can think of a few possible reasons for the choice: Springsteen as American mythmaker or as working-class moralist. But if the director had a clear intention, it never registers theatrically. (And is “I’m on Fire” really the best choice for this Quaker lady?)
Stories of frontier justice depend on tension: the moral, social, physical pressure must continue to build, and here it simply doesn’t. Kenrex, by contrast, puts us on the edge of our seats throughout. Unlike High Noon, it is wildly entertaining.
Jack Holden grabs us from the beginning. He begins upstage right, hunched in a small space, presenting two characters: a frantic wife calling for help after her husband’s been shot, and the 911 operator trying to elicit the necessary information.
Holden is not completely alone on stage. A musician, John Patrick Elliott, provides live accompaniment—guitar, banjo, keyboard, drums, and voice—underscoring Holden’s near-miraculous grasp of some dozen (twenty? thirty?) characters in the small Missouri town living under the shadow of the sociopathic Ken Rex McElroy.
Based on a true story, it feels a bit like the best possible true-crime podcast brought to terrifying life. McElroy brutalizes the citizens of this tiny town—through assault, arson, attempted murder (he also impregnates a 14-year-old girl, then marries her to evade statutory rape charges)—yet he is never convicted of a crime. That’s thanks to his slippery Saul Goodman-like lawyer, as well as a few well-timed actions of his own, like putting rattlesnakes in jurors’ mailboxes.
Until the final showdown, that is. Fed up with the inability of the justice system to protect them, a group of citizens finally gathers to take the law into their own hands. How does a single actor present this showdown? It’s Ken Rex against a circle of microphones, as Holden skips from one to another—from Ken Rex to another of his antagonists—until lights, smoke, darkness, and gunshots leave him dead, with no one man identifiable as his killer.
The prosecuting attorney is left as helpless to identify the killer as he was to put Ken Rex himself behind bars. He questions the morality of this ending, his inability to bring justice to bear on the murder. I appreciated his perspective but didn’t share his dismay. An unseen chorus of townspeople sing Shenandoah, an anthem of solidarity, of community, perhaps simply a return to ordinary life. The ending may be morally ambiguous, but I found it deeply satisfying.
I’ve contrasted these two shows largely in terms of theatrical effectiveness, but the difference is also moral and social. Where High Noon relies on the righteousness and courage of one individual, Kenrex gives us a community that comes together when institutions fail them.
It’s easy to see why the makers of this production of High Noon thought its story of standing up to evil remains relevant. Kenrex, however, feels more urgent, leaving us with the weight of collective responsibility.
I’ve wondered if Hitchcock saw “High Noon” (1950) as a suspense film. The clocks moving along, seemingly in real time, the cuts to the empty but soon to be filled train tracks.
Hitchcock had used the clock convention in “Sabotage” (1936), marking countdown to detonation of a bomb, but overall nothing like real time, which would have struck him as uncinematic .
And yet, later in “Rope” (1948) he adapted a stage play, adopting unity of time, by filming in ten-minute increments corresponding to the length of a film canister. It failed, and he regretted the production method as uncinematic.
Whatever he thought about “High Noon,” it gave Hitchcock a first look at Grace Kelly. He didn’t think much of her performance—the part is underwritten, underdeveloped. But she would become his ideal ice maiden (there had been an earlier one).
“High Noon” and 1950 mark a turning point for the American western. Younger post-war directors slowly brought more mature elements to the stories, and less myth and sentimentality.
Why adapt a film to the stage? In the case of “High Noon” how to replicate the close-ups of Cooper, his face wan, tired and fearful (the unfiltered black-and-white was aconscious choice). That’s montage, something Hitchcock likely appreciated. The singular aspect of film, and yes hard to reproduce on stage.
Why adapt a film to the stage? The cynical answer is: there’s a built-in audience. The Young Vic is opening a musical version of Thelma and Louise this fall. (Could this possibly be good? I have no idea.) And a stage version of The Lives of Others will be coming to the West End, closing just after I arrive in January. That one interests me since it’s directed by Robert Icke, who brings a singular vision to his work.
There’s the corollary, too: adapting plays into movie. So many failures! Into the Woods comes to mind. I’m in the minority with the following two, but I found the movie versions of both Wit and Angels in America unwatchable. Two terrific plays, and two adaptations that never get a handle on the theatrical artificiality that, paradoxically, heightens the audience’s emotional response. The movies just feel melodramatic and sentimental to me. (Mike Nichols is a smart guy. I don’t know how he went so wrong with those two.)
Film to stage adaptions: I forgot “The 39 Steps.” It gives weight, Lisa, to your premise of the built-in audience motivation.
It’s based on Hitchcock’s film of the same name (1935), his best British effort and among the finest of all his films.
I speculate that not even one in ten theater-goers had seen the film, but that a goodly number more knew something about Alfred Hitchcock. And the play’s producers were not shy about connecting it with Hitch in the publicity .
The play is a part parody, part faithful whirlwind, fronted by four actors inhabiting many many parts, on a stage with minimal props. All- in all, it’s an affectionate, tho frenetic, piece, with some clever references to other Hitchcock films. It stands on its own, but is best appreciated with a familiarity with the striking film. The only truly moving scene of human emotion in Hitchcock’s work falls flat in the play, which cannot compete with a close-up.
“The 39 Steps” had a very long run at the Criterion Theatre in London, where we saw it in 2009. The best video presentation of the film can be had on a blu ray from the Criterion Collection.
The film often plays in retrospectives on a double bill with Hitchcock’s other fine British thriller, “The Lady Vanishes” (1938). Indeed they thus played more than 50 years ago at Middlebury’s Dana Auditorium. It was a packed house.