HUB CITY THEATRE COMPANY’S THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE: A (P)REVIEW

This (p)review is generally spoiler-free

If anyone knows, or think they know, the classic western THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, they need to get down to the Carnegie this weekend for a fresh take. The 2014 script by Jethro Compton retains the central plotline and characters of John Ford’s 1962 film classic while updating the storyline to appeal to modern audiences. Can a stage adaptation be both funnier AND darker than the film? Hub City’s production, directed by David Burke, hits both targets like bullets fired from Bert Barricune’s Peacemaker.

But in addition to celebrating David Burke, Jethro Compton, and John Ford, we must acknowledge the somewhat unlikely source for this story: Dorothy M. Johnson, a woman who more resembled a mild-mannered librarian than the type who could produce such a violent, whiskey-soaked tale of the Old West. But Johnson, a Montana native transplanted to New York, became one of America's great Western writers; her 1953 short story inspired adaptations in song, film, and stage. The stage version of LIBERTY VALANCE restores some features of her short story, including the name Bert Barricune, a character called Tom Doniphon in the film version, brought to swaggering life by John Wayne.

The play, like the film, begins with the funeral of Barricune in 1910. Townspeople are surprised to see Senator Ransome “Ranse” Foster come all the way from Washington, D.C., to pay his respects. Barricune was a simple cowboy not known to have merited such high-profile attention, so when a dogged reporter presses Senator Foster to explain his presence, Foster unfolds his history with Barricune, a man he called “my enemy . . . my conscience; he made me whatever I am.”

Audiences are then transported two decades earlier to the town of Twotrees in an unspecified U.S. territory, and much of the play’s action happens in flashback. Long before Ransome Foster was a U.S. Senator, he was a “tenderfoot” from the East, newly arrived in the West to seek his fortune. He found Liberty Valance instead—an outlaw who teaches the tenderfoot a lesson with his “quirt,” a leather horsewhip that leaves Ranse bloody and at the brink of death. Barricune finds Ranse and brings him to the Prairie Belle, the saloon owned and operated by Hallie Jackson, a rare example of the fairer sex in the play.

Ranse is nursed back to health, and the rest of the play follows him as he builds a life for himself in Twotrees. He has ambitions to bring law and literacy to this uncultured town, but he’s also haunted by his encounter with Valance. Even this East Coast city slicker has his masculine pride, and one might reasonably speculate that Ranse hangs around Twotrees so that he may redress the shaming he received courtesy of Valance’s quirt. But Barricune fears the collateral damage that might result from Ranse attracting Valance’s attention. Barricune may also want Ranse to head on back East because Hallie seems to have taken a liking to the tenderfoot, and Barricune had always regarded Hallie as “[his] girl.” 

Thus the play sets up the inevitable showdown between Ranse and Liberty Valance, though the events that precipitate the confrontation are unique to the play and will surprise those who know the 1962 film. Yet for all my references to the film, it must be emphasized that audiences who know nothing about the storyline will find the play easy to follow and be deeply engaged by its characters and their narratives. 

This engagement is due mainly to the cast, whom the gifted theatre veteran David Burke has called the most professional he’s ever worked with. Indeed, the Barricune actor really did use to do this for a living—former Union University theatre professor John Klonowski. No one can outswagger The Duke in this iconic role, but Klonowski (dare I say it?) does it better by humanizing Barricune. The character in the John Ford film is a bit of a cartoon (John Wayne playing John Wayne again), but Klonowski conveys just how much Barricune risks in helping Ranse Foster—a man he doesn’t even like—and just how much it costs him. Playing opposite Klonowski is his former student, HCTC favorite Jake Beals. Beals’s energetic garrulity as Ranse is a vehicle to show off his superior edumufication as well as to establish him as a brainy foil to the hard-handed men who surround him, chief among these being his romantic rival, Barricune. 

The film version works hard to develop a dichotomous tension between two outlooks on American life—one a rugged, realistic vision in which the simple exercise of might shapes reality, represented by, or at least recognized by, Barricune, over and against the more idealized world of abstract principles, including law and order, represented by Ranse Foster and his books. These themes are present in the stage play, but they don’t receive the same kind of emphasis.

For this reviewer, the most pleasant surprise was Sara Hand as Hallie Jackson. Hand’s skill as an actor was not the surprising part; she capably brought Mother Superior to life in HCTC’s AGNES OF GOD back in 2023. But Mother Superior would be shocked at the words coming out of Hallie’s potty mouth in this play. In the film, Hallie is an inoffensive dishrag fought over by the men, a human MacGuffin competently played by Vera Miles. But in Compton’s modern script, Hallie is a spirited force in her own right, with a sharp tongue to match. Hand’s performance brings out both the sweet and salty of this vibrant character.

Also in the 1962 film, WWII veteran and former football star Woody Strode, a black actor, played Pompey, John Wayne’s hireling and right-hand man. The film debuted right at the beginning of the American Civil Rights movement, and a few of the film’s scenes engage themes of racial equality, especially when Pompey is asked to recite portions of the Declaration of Independence and forgets the line that “all men are created equal,” perhaps suggesting that his lived experience did not comport with the high-minded Jeffersonian ideals celebrated in the document. In the HCTC production, UU theatre veteran Steve Williams brings great dignity to this role, and the importance of his character (here named Jim “The Reverend” Mosten) is expanded far beyond that of the film.

If Jim is a portrait in dignity, then Marshal Johnson is a portrait in cowardice. Why has Liberty Valance been allowed to run amok in Twotrees? Look no further than the pusillanimous town marshal, played with resolute spinelessness by Chad Carlson, last seen on the Hub City stage as Marc in 2024’s production of ART. For Carlson’s turn as Marshal Johnson, think Chief Wiggum from THE SIMPSONS, only less competent. He is assisted in incompetence by his Deputy, played by Clint Garig.

Christina Greenwell does a fine turn playing the intrepid reporter who prompts Senator Foster’s recollections and who serves as a kind of Greek Chorus to this farewell letter to the Old West.

Swilling whiskey in the background are John Mark Maust and Russ Evans as Liberty’s henchmen. Their look is so perfect that they seem to have just stepped out of an 1890’s tintype. Helping send Bert Barricune into that great Dude Ranch in the Sky are Twotrees townsmen Eli Carlson, Isaiah Carlson, Laniqua Woods, and Jackson theatre mainstay Robert Brasher.

A special shout out to the design crew and prop masters John Mark Maust and Oliver C Koons, for the Prairie Belle is as fine a set as Hub City has ever produced. The set is complemented by the Carnegie basement itself. While seats have been upgraded for comfort, the Carnegie still retains the architectural spirit of a space opened in 1903, roughly the time of the play. And mention needs to be made of Olivia Roberts’s spectacular costuming, which does much to transport audiences to a very different America. The play is stage managed by Alfred J Custer II, assisted by Hub City Improv Queen Kara Mobley, who also operates sound and lights. Technical director is Erik Alexander and house manager is Kelly Maust. Sonically bringing it all together is Hub City friend and composer Ben Trainor, whose original music for the show combines contemporary sensibilities with old timey tack piano, played live onstage by Daniel Varughese.

But really, there’s only one performance that takes the air out of the room, and that’s Blake Staples as Liberty Valance. Staples’s impact on the production is all out of proportion to his time on stage. He’s simply unforgettable. Costumer Roberts must share some of the credit here, for Staples cuts an angularly ominous figure clad in midnight black. And how did he get that scar? That gunmetal grey eye? Staples’s serpentine performance is full of understated menace, making Lee Marvin’s 1962 Valance look like Mary Poppins. But this Liberty Valance is no black hat cliché. In his discourse with Ranse Foster, one intuits that only Valance could be Foster’s intellectual rival west of Barrel Canyon. His apologia for violence is so eloquent that at times I found myself secretly hoping that it was his bullet that would prevail. Is it blasphemous to say that the wrong man got shot? Yeah, probably. Liberty Valance is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Evil incarnate. But damn. The closest literary analogue to Staples’s Valance is Milton’s Satan, showing just how seductive sin can be. 

Which is why, somewhere, somehow, there must always be a man willing to shoot him. 

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THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, directed by David Burke, is playing the next two weekends in the basement of the Carnegie Center for Arts and History downtown. It is a play in two equal acts with a total running time of about 2:30, not including a 15-minute intermission.

The play is suitable for most audiences, but the Prairie Belle is no place for the young’uns. The play contains mild profanity, an occasional sexual joke, racial slurs, and, of course, violence. Late in the play there are some realistic gunshots, and in the enclosed theater, these are LOUD. Really loud. Did I mention they were loud? Such moments can be reasonably anticipated by the action of the play, but jittery playgoers might still want to have their index fingers ready near the ears.

Preview party Thursday, May 22 at 6:30. This premium ticket includes tasty food & drink.

Friday & Saturday shows, May 23-24 at 7:30

Sunday matinee, May 25 at 3:00

Friday & Saturday shows, May 30-31 at 7:30

Sunday matinee, May 11 at 3:00

Seating is limited at the Carnegie. Ticket link below!