Adapted by Emma Rice
Wise Children, York Theatre Royal, HOME Manchester and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse production
York Theatre Royal
March 27-April 5, 2025; 2hrs 30mins
(also HOME Manchester - April 29-May 10; Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse- May 20-24)
What do you remember from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 film thriller, North by Northwest? Perhaps man-on-the-run Cary Grant being chased across cornfields by a crop-dusting plane? Or Grant and his leading lady clambering over the gigantic presidential faces carved into the mighty Mount Rushmore?
Such moments make the film a favourite among Hitchcock’s movies, but you can’t help wondering how on earth this mix of startling visuals and convoluted Cold War plot can be made to work on stage.
Step forward Emma Rice, a theatre-maker well-versed in successful adaptations from Wuthering Heights and Brief Encounter to The Buddha of Suburbia. She even has an unlikely adaptation of the BBC television rag-and-bone comedy Steptoe and Son in her Kneehigh Theatre repertoire. Clearly, this is a director who can turn the most unlikely subject into theatrical gold – and she’s done it again. Five stars all round to everyone involved in her latest.
Rice recreates the iconic moments from the film in her own way, but there's much more on offer in this dazzling production than simply reproducing cinematic set-pieces. Her Wise Children company last appeared at the Theatre Royal with the dark, daunting and totally brilliant Bluebeard. North by Northwest finds her in more playful mood until the final, punch-in-the stomach moment that brings together the themes and ideas that Rice says in her programme notes are "agonisingly relevant today".
Before getting serious, Rice and her team deliver a show that is funny, dramatic, romantic, dangerous, tuneful, smart, thrilling and a million other praise-worthy things. She does it with suitcases (a lot of them), suits (not so many), hats (only a few) and huge revolving doors (four of them). And that’s not to mention the handmade cornfield, fashioned from paper sticks.
Some may wince at the audience participation borrowed from pantomime. “You can do better than that,” challenges Katy Owen when asking the audience to repeat a name. But her main task is to help the audience navigate its way through what Rice calls "a fiendish Rubik’s Cube of a show".
But It’s all part of the fun, as Ewan Wardrop’s man-on-the-run gets to grips with secret agents, a Cold War conspiracy and one of the obligatory ice-cool blondes Hitchcock loved so much.
Ewan Wardrop is every inch the executive caught up in a conspiracy and a romance for which he’s ill-prepared with Patrycja Kujawska’s spy/double-agent/seductress.
Mirabelle Gremaud, Karl Queensborough and Simon Oskarsson complete the small but perfectly formed, hard-working cast.
Rob Howell’s set is a marvel of moving pieces: who knew revolving doors could be so versatile?
With a serous message in mind, Rice doesn’t just want to have fun but ensures the journey is choc-a-bloc with comedy, song and dance and thrills.
More info and tickets here
