NORTH BY NORTHWEST
Over the years I have enjoyed so much of director and theatre maker Emma Rice’s work. Her re-imagining of Brief Encounter was a delicious evening of nostalgia beautifully realised for the stage and her truly beautiful imagining of the life and loves of painter Marc Chagall, The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk, was stunning. When it came to her staging of Rebecca I was less impressed, the imagination gone rogue with much silliness emerging, a puppet dog that repeatedly urinated on the set became an irritation. And Wuthering Heights was delivered with so much gusto that at times it was impenetrable.
So given my more recent misgivings I was interested to see what she would make of a classic Hitchcock movie, and one that I really love. It was written for the screen, a case of mistaken identity, a spy thriller, packed with tension, spectacle and with Hitchcock’s delicate humour. It was star studded, Cary Grant, James Mason, Eva Marie Saint… and it contained so many iconic moments, none less so than the attack by aircraft and the exploding oil tanker. The sort of material that Rice handles so well and her style of theatre is so well suited for.
This six hander was delivered by a company of truly talented performers. The energy displayed was impressive, characterisations, physicality, multiple roles all delivered with skill and with humour, yes lashings of humour.
Humour that in my very personal view dragged the whole thing tumbling down, and I say personal because clearly the audience were lapping it up, laughter throughout but at the expense of any sense of threat. Almost as if the darkness of the plot, of subterfuge, world politics and death had been thrown out. Dare I suggest that this had become Carry On Hitchcock. Well there you have it, I did say it. The whole piece was larded with silliness, silly walks, silly, but well executed, choreography, silly, but again well executed, costumes and hats and props, I put forward a case for having fewer cases and fewer labels on cases for sure. And the lip synced songs, whilst the first one made me smile by the end and many songs later they had started to make me cringe. Roger Thornhill became a camp travesty of a character, in stark contrast to the macho Manhattan man but for what reason? Heaven only knows!
The set however and they way it worked was magnificent, despite an opening line about the city in 1959 becoming a place of towering steel and glass, the four revolving doors/bars looked to me stylistically from an earlier architectural era, but they worked well in changing locations. But the constantly tricksy props, yet more gags, felt cluttered and removed any sense of tension.
I have already praised the cast, their skills and their energy, but one member of the company really stood out. To have the whole narrated, essential at times if we were to know what the hell was going on, fell to the talents of one actor. And thank god that the actor was up to the job. Katy Owen made the evening bearable with a very convincing portrayal of The Professor, amongst other incidental roles. Her clipped English, rapid changes, at times garbled speeches were the highlight of the evening, and she certainly looked strangely like Leo G. Carroll. It was this performance that kept me there until the end.
It was funny for sure, but it lacked suspense, terror, fear and shock and subtlety, Hitchcock himself was no stranger to humour, he liked a gag, but he deployed them with skill. This was a disappointingly camp piece of nonsense, delivered with energy and style, but a hollow vessel ultimately.
Andrew Kay
14 May
Brighton Festival @ Theatre Royal Brighton
Rating:
