Double Indemnity review – leaden drama turns crime classic into a very cold case

Churchill theatre, Bromley James M Cain’s hard-bitten novella gained bleak power on screen but this version, giving Mischa Barton her UK stage debut, loses its flinty edge The West End’s woeful High Noon showed how hard it is to put a western on stage. How about another rugged American genre, the film noir? James M Cain’s cynical, gripping 1936 novella was sharpened for the 1944 movie by director Billy Wilder and his co-writer, Raymond Chandler. This theatrical adaptation, previously seen in a 2