North by Northwest Review – Emma Rice takes Hitchcock in delicious new directions | Theater
MIstaken Identity shoots the 1959 Kafkaesque spy thriller by Alfred Hitchcock. The existential terror of a man under attack by unknown forces begins when the announcement of New York Roger Thornhill gets up to make a phone call in a hotel hall and is mistaken for George Kaplan, a non -existent spy created as bait from the security services of the Cold War of the United States. From there, it is pursued by the enemies of the state. If everyone insists is George, where does he leave his sense of himself?
Emma RiceThe adaptation does not concern the crisis around identity, but for sending the kind of espionage through an arched collection of spies and bad.
It is deliciously playful, even if there is not enough charge below. The themes of the drama drama, toxic safety and war security of the war are raised rather late, as a rethinking. There is a small mediating or darkness of Hitchcockian, nor the danger of the film.
But theatrical fun, games and entertainment are abundant, together with witty subversions. Much of the screenplay of the film is preserved, some of its dated jokes have been thick with irony, but the adaptation adds narration, ironic comments and moments of perforation of the fourth wall that contain a really fun participation of the public.
Women interpret men, men interpret women and characters burst into slender or synchronized dances for the lips to the vintage jazz numbers (compositions of Simon Baker, combined with Peggy Lee classics, Ella Fitzgerald, Cole Porter and more).
Ewan Wardrop captures Carly Grant’s Droll cimurro from the film and appears as a Hitchcockian 007 comedian with his dry martini and softness. His love story with Eva Kendall (Patrycja Kujowska), dressed in Femme Statale red dress, is played in a language.
Spies in long coats and shades swing around them; The characters vaguely remember British intelligence men satrified by the musical Operation Mineat (That accident of the Second World War was one of the influences for the film).
The cast of Sei Forte, including the Rice Stalwarts company, does a remarkable job by evoking the sense of a much larger ensemble on stage. Excel in physical comedy, often put on Shuffles and Shucks Jazz, with the humorous choreography of Etta Murfitt. Professor-narter is a culminating point, played by Katy Owen (who was bright Wuthering Heights by Riceas well).
It is also a company to transpose the action set sets of the film with trains, planes and car channels on fucking curves. Rice manages it with typically intelligent humor and imagination: the United Nations headquarters in which a murder takes place is gracefully evoked with a formation of telephone operators who speak a babel of languages while the iconic placing air attack on Thornhill is full of miniaturized inventions.
Malcolm Rippetth’s witty lighting works well with the elegant scenography of Rob Howell, a series of rotating doors and bottles of liqueur. The effect is glorious and grandiose, filling the stage and gesticulating towards the constantly evolving disguises that the cast takes on.
It is a production that seems emphatically light and the final scene of Mount Rushmore does not bring the precipitous danger of the film (how could it be?). But this is a espionage for the crowd for the summer: funny, intelligent and fueled by the joyful capricious of Rice.
