North by Northwest

As an avowed fan of Alfred Hitchcock, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the MTC's stage adaptation of North by Northwest, one of his most famous movies. While the stage version of an earlier Hitchcock film, The 39 Steps, has enjoyed considerable success, North by Northwest has such iconic status (due in no small measure to the charisma of original stars Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint) and famous setpieces (the plane attack in the cornfields, the chase across the faces of Mount Rushmore) that it was difficult to see how a stage production could do it justice.

But director Simon Phillips has done an admirable job. Admittedly he had very good source material to work with - Ernest Lehman's sparkling script, as adapted by Carolyn Burns (though with remarkably few deviations from the original), and one of the all-time great movie music scores by Bernard Herrmann, used to fabulous effect throughout (and in critical points such as the finale, absolutely in synch with the live action). The sheer technical expertise on display, especially the staging, blocking and set design, was quite remarkable - with a wonderfully versatile set obviously inspired by Saul Bass' famous title sequence for the original movie.

Playing leading man Roger Thornhill, Matt Day wisely avoided doing an impression of Cary Grant, instead giving us a somewhat less charming, harder-edged, but nevertheless sympathetic character. Amber McMahon as Eve Kendall and Matt Hetherington as Vandamm, on the other hand, both appeared to have spent considerable effort in reproducing the speech patterns and accents of the original movie roles (as played by Eva Marie Saint and James Mason respectively). In the case of Mr Hetherington, this occasionally veered rather too close to an impersonation as opposed to an interpretation. Deidre Rubenstein, as Thornhill's mother, had many of the funniest lines, but oddly these laughs often seemed lost on the audience.

The only area where the production fell short was in some of the back projection work and other 'special effects' necessary to evoke Hitchcock's famous imagery. The decision to make visible to the audience the 'technicians' (cast members) working models in front of bluescreen was an odd one, necessarily distracting one's focus from where it should have been - on the actors and their emotional responses to what was happening to them in the scene. In the case of the Mount Rushmore climax, the idea of using live actors' heads to recreate the famous monument created an odd juxtaposition between the drama of the piece (which had been played pretty straight to this point) and the inherent absurdity of the situation - something which Hitchcock himself was always at pains to avoid.

For those not familiar with the movie, the convolutions of the plot may be difficult to follow. But if you do know it (which seemed to be the case for most in the audience), this will likely be an enjoyable and memorable experience.

Alex Paige

Images: Amber McMahon (Eve Kendall) and Matt Day (Roger O.Thornhill) & Matt Day (Roger O.Thornhill), Sheridan Harbridge, Amber McMahon (Eve Kendall) and Lachlan Woods. Photographer: Jeff Busby.