The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Park Theatre

A classic Hollywood Western, transformed for the stage… The Park Theatre’s world premiere of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance certainly inspired some trepidation from critics. But this smart and gripping depiction of a lawless society is surprise success. 

The show is adapted from a short story by eminent Western writer Dorothy M Johnson, which went on to inspire John Ford’s blockbuster Hollywood movie staring John Wayne.  To set it apart from the film – and to side step the tricky process of obtaining stage rights – playwright and director Jethro Compton’s script returns to this taut twenty page tale.

The result is an intense and engaging makeover of the Western genre. Told as a flashback, it follows a young New Yorker who arrives in the Wild West beaten and bruised. As this newcomer recovers, sets up a home and begins to fall in love, he also becomes the target of a brutal outlaw. In Compton’s masterful re-working of the tale, all the action takes place in the single setting of a saloon bar. As the set stays static, a score of traditional cowboy tunes, tense theme music and old hymns create cinematic shifts in atmosphere. 

Oliver Lansely (BBC’s Best Possible Taste) gives a stand out performance as the broodingly brave Ransome Foster, while a recorded voiceover from Hollywood legend Robert Vaughn (The Man form U.N.C.L.E, The Magnificent Seven) is not only a joy to hear, but also an ingenious way of marrying text, screen and stage, as the descriptive passages transport the audience to the lawless Wild West.