By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK? ***1/2

WHEN? Friday 19 December, opens 9 January and runs through 7 March 2026 RUNTIME 100 minutes without interval

There’s a clock above the stage ticking forward in real time to the titular High Noon as Billy Crudup’s marshal Will Kane prepares to meet his fate.

• Read on for reasons including how Gough and Crudup make for a couple the audience can root for

Rewind to this production’s opening at 10.25am in the 1800s in small town Hadleyville, New Mexico as Kane marries his quaker bride Amy, played here by an unexpectedly singing Denise Gough (People, Places and Things, Wyndham’s Theatre) who is shortlisted for a Best TV/Film Actress monsta this year for Andor.

There’s joyful singing and dancing as she explains how she renounces violence and persuades a reluctant Kane to hand in his badge and leave town for an idyllic new life out of Hadleyville in a shop they will run together.

Their plans are put on hold however when news reaches them that Frank Miller, a vicious outlaw Kane sent to prison, has been released and will arrive by the noon train a day before the new marshal reaches it.

This is the world premiere of a play written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump and Dune) based on the 4-time Oscar-winning 1952 film starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly.

The film is a mere 85 minutes long and this production apes its form without interval yet manages to find an extra 15 or so minutes which detract from the propulsion to an imminent and difficult deadline suggested by the title.

The film remains popular because it focuses on Kane’s sense of duty to the community he has built up and protected but yet is met by cowardice from the residents who mostly refuse to back him up preferring instead to inflict the populism of the returning outlaw on themselves.

It’s Roth’s debut work for the stage and it’s certainly unusual to see what is renowned as 1 of celluloid’s greatest westerns ever made in this form.

There’s strong support from Billy Howle (Look Back In Anger, Almeida) as Kane’s deputy who views the marshal as his hero but isn’t regarded in quite the same way as Kane.

Rosa Salazar is compelling also as Helen Ramirez a businesswoman who has had relationships with Kane, Miller and Kane’s deputy.

Robert Icke (Oedipus, Wyndham’s Theatre) would be proud on the emphasis placed here on the real-time use of the clock, Gough and Crudup make for a couple the audience can root for but this play struggles to match the iconic film on which it is based.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy ATG Tickets
• Have you seen a Denise Gough show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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