A new Wise Children show is always an event, and here we have a meeting of two titans of storytelling: Hitchcock and Rice. North by Northwest is often hailed as one of the best thrillers ever made, with its iconic performances, light but intriguing tone and brace of legendary scenes. Surely anyone who even vaguely knows of the film comes into the theatre wondering how on earth they’re going to replicate the film’s famous crop duster and Mount Rushmore sequences.
The answer is: with typical panache and tongue placed slightly—though not too firmly—in cheek. In Emma Rice’s adaptation, the mysterious Professor takes centre stage as a master of ceremonies, narrator and puller of puppet strings. That the role is taken by long-time Rice collaborator Katy Owen helps, of course: Owen is, as ever, infinitely watchable, with a just-about-tamed sense of mischief about her.
Owen, as part of the ensemble of six, introduces us to the story of Roger Thornhill (Ewan Wardrop). The year is 1959, and Thornhill, a successful New York advertising executive, is about to find his life turned upside down by a case of mistaken identity which has him pegged as a government spy and abducted by two thickly accented heavies. From there, the complications and confusions multiply, as Thornhill struggles to prove his innocence, regain his identity and maybe even find love along the way.
The film is an extended chase, a series of location-based set-pieces which take us from glamorous hotels to cross-country trains, to the United Nations building and a high-end auction house, as well as the aforementioned showdown scenes. The stage design, by Rob Howell, employs four towering revolving doors which double as swanky bars and are repeatedly reconfigured to form the walls of these high-end locations, all polished wood, brass and rows of drinks bottles.
Labelled suitcases provide handy indicators of setting or character and often disgorge playful props. Along the back wall, a row of suits speaks to both the elegance of Thornhill’s wardrobe and the multiroling nature of the production: performers emerge busily or slink discretely through the costumes as they take on a variety of roles. Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting shifts and shapes the space well, as well as providing glitz for the song and dance numbers that punctuate the action.
In these, the troupe (especially Simon Oskarsson, Mirabelle Gremaud, and Ewan Wardrop) perform a series of effortlessly stylish dances, all skipping jumps and sinuous hips, while lip-synching to a series of era-appropriate numbers, from Nina Simone to Judy Garland. Simon Baker’s music and sound design keeps a suitably filmic atmosphere thrumming beneath the action throughout.
The other puzzle for a company attempting an adaptation of North by Northwest is how to replicate the ineffable charm of Cary Grant, who in the film transforms a potentially quite unlikeable character (a womanising ad exec) into a charming everyman. In Wardrop, Rice has found an ideal stage parallel. Throwing himself into the dance and lip synch sequences, energising every one of the (many) scenes he’s in and carrying himself with the same casual control and slight note of bemused humour as Grant’s original, Wardrop is splendid here.
Oskarsson and Gremaud play the (married) pair of foreign agents, as well as an array of incidental roles, with great wit and energy. Karl Queensborough has perhaps the most varied set of cameos, embodying Thornhill’s overbearing and barely helpful mother as well as the enigmatic leader of the gang of ‘baddies’, Phillip Vandamm. While the show avoids direct parody, in this latter role, Queensborough puts across an irresistible James Mason impression, suavely drawling the name of the suspected spy, ‘George Kaplan’. Queensborough really impresses, amongst a strong ensemble.
Patrycja Kujawska returns to Wise Children as femme fatale Eve Kendall (among other smaller roles), whom Thornhill meets on the sleeper train and who plays a pivotal part in the intrigue. She’s again a versatile multiroler and brings a spot-on blend of icy inscrutability and emotion to her key character.
Despite a classically Wise Children approach to theatrical storytelling and fun, the adaptation is perhaps surprisingly faithful, with vast tracts of the screenplay’s dialogue delivered as-is in this version. Some smaller connecting scenes are cut, but the dry wit and frothily thrilling tone of the original are preserved well.
There’s less of the modernising irony and madcap metatheatricality of the likes of The Thirty-Nine Steps, for instance, which might otherwise be an obvious comparison point. Rice’s project instead trusts the bones of the original. Interpolations and reinventions come mainly at the end of the piece, but these pick up on aspects that haunt the film itself rather than overlaying a modern moral.
Overall, a MacGuffin-stuffed delight, for fans of the film as well as those unfamiliar with it, and sure to be a big hit.