Emma Rice's Wise Children's latest production is an adaptation of the classic Hitchcock film, 'North By Northwest'. Set in 1959, we find ourselves following the Cold War exploits of the baddies versus the goodies, thanks to a completely innocent and badly timed telephone call by an innocent man, Roger, who becomes embroiled in their skulduggery, and manages to fall in love along the way too.
The production is a whirlwind of revolving doors and suitcases (an Emma Rice trademark!), and is stylish, highly stylised, and very entertaining. A true ensemble production where physical theatre, mime, dance, and goodness knows what else all combine to make a fast-paced, humourful, suspense drama which is vocally and visually interesting. Rice's adaptation is brilliant - this is a beautiful homage to the master and his work; a lovingly created pastiche which compliments the film but also satirises it at one and the same time. Part Musical and part Noir, and with clever use of suitcases, lighting, and slick choreography, the stage and actors leap (sometimes quite literally) from location to location with seamless ease, becoming an elevator, a car, or even the iconic crop-spreading biplane over the cornfield.
We start with a breaking of the fourth wall, and meet our narrator of the story - The Professor (Kathy Owen), and from that moment on you simply travel with them as dancing raincoated spies appear and disappear as we go along. A company of just six actors / actresses make up all the characters involved, changing costumes and genders with sometimes nothing more than the addition of a hat! We watch our unwitting hero Roger (Ewan Wardrop) tackle the evil Russian spies with microfilm in Lincoln's attache case, Vandamm (Karl Queensborough - who also makes a brilliant comedy turn as Roger's mother!), with his two henchmen Valerian (Simon Oskarsson) and Anna (Mirabelle Grenaud). Whilst the CIA has a deep-cover agent Eve (Patrycja Kujawska) as Vandamm's moll. But the most impressive actors of this production were simply the revolving doors - four of them which 'War Of The Worlds'-like dominate the stage looming ominously and ever-present, but utilised superbly.
Ending the show with a commentary on the Cold War politics of the time was a nice touch, and truly put the piece of theatre into context. Slick, clever. ingenious - a five star thumbs-up of a production.
Reviewer - Alastair Zyggu
on - 30.4.25
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