Emma Rice’s stylish stage adaptation of Hitchcock’s classic

Endlessly inventive, clever and stylish. Words that are routinely applied to Alfred Hitchcock classic 1959 spy thriller can easily be applied to Emma Rice’s endlessly inventive, clever and stylish stage adaptation. We could also add funny and crowd-pleasing.

North By Northwest is in many ways, typical Hitchcock. On one level, a shaggy dog yarn of mistaken identity, on the other a Cold War thriller about the post-War landscape. And in Rice’s hands, done with a dry martini and a laugh.

Rice takes Hitchcock’s story – the best of his four films with Cary Grant – and gives it music and verve, some great lines and a fantastic 50s inspired soundtrack. “I have loved getting to grips with Hitchcock’s incredible mind. He is one of the greatest storytellers of all time and I wonder at the way he uses glamour, sexual tension, intricate plotting and complex characters to make the cogs of his super-stylish worlds turn,” Rice has said. What Hitchcock didn’t do was use song and dance, humour and ‘fourth wall’ nods and winks to create a wonderfully entertaining night out. For all that playfulness, the story surprisingly straight and the lines faithful, to the point of even recreating the famous bi-plane crop-dusting scene with style – and humour.

Ewan Wardrop, who was excellent, takes the Grant role of Roger Thornhill, mild-mannered advertising exec Roger Thornhill, who gets mistaken for George Carlin, a…well, we’re never too sure about George Carlin. But it’s a wild ride that takes Thornhill deep into the Cold War, and from New York to Chicago to Mount Rushmore taking in love, betrayal, a bit more love and no little interference from his mother.

The cast – Wardrop, Mirabelle Gremaud as Anna, Patrycja Kujawska as Eva Kendall, Simon Oskarsson as Valerian and Karl Queensborough as Philip Vandamm – all excel, but Katy Owen steals the show as the narrator, revelling in the witty script and constantly bringing the audience into the story, always effortlessly, never to the detriment of the story. The whole production, from the staging to the clothing to the singing, flows with wit and style. No one left the sold out theatre without a smile on their face. It was apparently over two hours long. You’d never have known.