Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest
Adapted and Directed by Emma Rice
Choreographed by Etta Murfitt
Wise Children Production
Bath Theatre Royal
Wednesday 28th May 2025, 14.30
CAST
Ewan Wardrop- Roger Thornhill
Mirabelle Gremaud – Anna
Patrycja Kujawska- Eve Kendall
Simon Oskarsson – Valerian
Katy Owen – The Professor
Karl Queensborough – Philip Vandamm
All other roles played by the company
This is the fifth venue in the tour, with Cheltenham and Alexandra Palace yet to come. Emma Rice is running through classic film and book adaptations, and has reached my favourite Hitchcock film. It’s also my kids’ favourite. If anyone was off school with flu, North by Northwest became standard comfort viewing. I’ve seen it at least ten times.
Wise Children increasingly looks like a company … three of the cast of six were in Blue Beard last year, and Ewan Wardrop was in her RSC production of The Buddah of Suburbia last year.
North by Northwest is a logistical challenge on stage, but no more than Around The World in 80 Days, which worked as a stage play. I hope they don’t attempt Stagecoach or Charge of The Light Brigade though.
The joy of Emma Rice plays is the sheer theatricality. We are fans (or were until today). This one was a challenge too far. The stage has four revolving towers, looking like hotel bars, which can be moved around, assembled in different configurations and opened and closed. The rear of the stage is a row of men’s jackets, like the world’s biggest dry cleaners. I didn’t get that at all. Yes, that’s a great idea if the cast use it as a costume rail, enhancing the theatricality, but they didn’t use it. So what did it say? I didn’t like the lighting plot. Lights were harsh and too often pointing up at characters.
The base story? Roger Thornhill is an advertising guy. He gets kidnapped by two people (Simon Oskarsson as Valerian, Mirabelle Grimaud as Anna) who think he is George Kaplan, a government agent they’re looking for. He is taken to the house of allegedly Mr Townsend. This is the evil Vandamm (Karl Queensborough) posing as Townsend.
When he fails to answer their questions, alcohol is poured into him and he’s set off in a sports car to drive down steep roads. (The chair and steering wheel ploy). He survives, but is arrested. The police and his mother accompany him to the house, and are convinced that he was at a party there and got drunk of his own accord. (I note that in thus, “mum” is played by Karl Queensborough as pantomime dame / ugly sister and beats her son around the head with her bag. It’s so Punch & Judy I expected her to say “That’s the way to do it!”)
Roger and his mum pretend to be Kaplan and enter his room at the Plaza Hotel (no one pointed out that it was later owned by Trump. I would have!) They go to find Townsend at the United Nations. The villains stab Townsend, and Thornhill is left holding him and the knife. He has to flee.
He takes a train to Chicago, and is assisted and hidden by Eve Kendall (Patrycja Kujawska). They fall into a romantic clench. Little does he know she is Vandamm’s girlfriend and part of the gang. I thought Ewan Wardrop and Patrycja Kujawska succeeded in channeling Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint, while remaining “themselves” and seamlessly blending comedy with impersonation. Patrycja Kujawska’s natural mild Polish accent adds to the Cold War spy feel too. Valerian has a Russian accent which avoids the perennial issue of British actors doing American accents.
When they get to Chicago Eve arranges a meeting with ‘George Kaplan’ and he takes a bus to a remote spot. This is the hardest scene of all to do. It is a trap, he will be attacked by a crop duster plane. The execution of this “impossible scene” was a minor triumph, my favourite part of the play.
While the narrator talks, the others make corn cobs by cutting rolls of paper with scissors. This will be the cornfield. Flags will be the biplane. A handheld deodorant spray will be the crop dusting chemicals. A suitcase with OIL TANKER will be the oil tanker. Surprise. It worked.
Back in Chicago, Vandamm and Kendall are at an art auction. Thornhill arrives, sees the threat and gets himself arrested. I liked the modern art object here a black square with a black square in the middle. At the police station he meets The Professor who explains that Kaplan was fictitious, but Eve is the real CIA agent who is now in mortal danger.
They fly to Mount Rushmore and arrange to meet Vandamm at the Observation Deck. Eva shoots Roger, proving to Vandamm that she is loyal … you know the rest. I liked Mount Rushmore as a pile of suitcases.
I thought they stretched out the end much too far with an unnecessary addition of Vandamm explaining his criminality was due to a deprived childhood. If you wanted to clip five minutes, that was the place, not that it was long. They eschewed references to Putin and Hitmen. I would have inserted something parallel. (We came from Russia to South Dakota as tourists because we wanted to see some snow. That would have resonated in Salisbury!)
The great positive is movement and music. They dance through most scenes, to a 50s jazz swinging soundtrack. It is highly effective. Ewan Wardrop as Roger Thornhill does his entrances and exits in dance, and he started his career as a dancer. It shows.
Our comic villains, Mirabelle Gremaud as Anna and Simon Oskarsson as Valerian, present props like wine glasses with a funny walk, and dance along. Mirabelle Gremaud got applause for onstage somersaults and a spectacular splits.
Then a special thing is miming to great classic renditions of songs by Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Jackie Wilson and Nina Simone. This is often mismatched to the gender of the recording by a famous singer, funny and well executed. A major programme fault, common to so many productions, is failing to list and credit “found” songs. If you are going to devote three minutes of stage time to Nina Simone singing Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, then she deserves a credit, as do Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott and Sol Marcus for writing it. (I could be even more pedantic than usual and point out that it’s 1964, so outside the 1959 time frame.) I loved the mimimg to songs and as ever, Emma Rice productions bring out the backstage staff for curtain calls. So respect the composers and singers too, please. I fully understand that producers may not want the audience to know the songs in advance, but you buy a programme on the way in. It’s dark. You only look briefly before the play.
THE NARRATOR
I’m going to be cruel, so let’s quote opposing views to mine first.
The professor-narrator is a highlight, played by Katy Owen (who was luminous in Rice’s Wutherimg Heights too.)
Arifa Akbar The Guardian
Katy Owen is a total scene-stealer, not only as the enigmatic Professor but as a narrator, crowd-rallier and mischief-maker. Her command of the stage and the audience is magnetic—whether she’s guiding us through the narrative or prompting a pantomime-style response, she’s a riot.
Sarah Monaghan, All About Theatre
the major change comes with the character of The Professor, the chief of the good guys, whoever they are. In this case, he is also the narrator, sardonic and bullying in his treatment of the audience whose attention he doubts, making the most of Rice’s clever script – a tour de force from Katy Owen.
Ron Simpson, What’s On Stage
The plot is undeniably complex (this is a Hitchcock thriller, after all) but Rice solves that elegantly with moments of audience call-and-response that clarify the chaos without ever slowing the pace.
Sean Sable, Northern Arts
So I totally disagree with all the above. This is the issue, the role of the narrator as ‘The Professor’ the CIA guy behind it. I think the role is a basic error. It’s an interactive pantomime role. This is a very special skill, and Katy Owen does not hack it. I’m afraid I made the same comment on her in Blue Beard last year. She is now hampered with a silly Advanced RP British accent. This sort of pally interaction with an audience needs to be relaxed and in the natural voice. You can’t do it in a daft voice. It has too look spontaneous, and it looked scripted and forced, which it was. I’ve seen people do this and appear spontaneous twice a night for six days a week. Director at fault. Yes, I’m hyper-critical. When we did ELT stage shows all of us could do it. When I did book tours, I surprised publishers reps by doing the same apparently spur of the moment audience response bits every day. They were convinced that the first ones really were ad lib. I lit Tommy Cooper, Mike Yarwood, Ken Dodd. I’ve seen Victoria Wood, Lee Mack, Les Dawson, Lenny Henry and perhaps the best, Frankie Howard, do audience interaction and response live. OK, these are mainly professional comedians, but Jon Broadbent at the RSC Comedy of Errors is an actor who did it so brilliantly. Katy Owen doesn’t have the knack, either that or maybe she could do it if she was left to her natural accent, but not with a put-on silly voice. Sorry. Her performance really irritated both of us right from the very start and knocked a full star off our rating. I groaned every time she started another bit.
I am not quite alone:
One pivotal decision does not coalesce quite as well. The introduction of a narrator called the Professor (played by Katy Owens) can be too tongue-in-cheek for its own good. The goal of the character, presumably, is to make sure the audience is paying attention to and understanding the complex plot, but given that the film and the play have enough wit and pizazz to keep you entertained even if the plot evades you in some scenes, it can feel laboured and even a bit patronising, veering dangerously into panto territory.
Lily Hardman Far Out magazine
Exactly.
RATING
The building and stage really affect rating. Bath Theatre Royal is truly beautiful outside. It’s 200 years old. That means like older West End theatres the stalls have an inadequate rake, and we opt for the Royal Circle which is ‘the back’ of the stalls, about 8 feet higher, rather than “above”. We used to choose row A or B but they’re continuous with no aisle, there is no legroom and Bath’s matinee audience have too many who are too old (or stroppy) to stand as you squeeze along the row pressed precipitously against the low barrier. We have recently chosen a couple of rows further back where there is an aisle, but then the main circle is above your head, the roof is low, and the sound is poor in Row C, worse in Row E where we were for this. (Row A is very good indeed). Four of the cast were crystal clear. Ewan Wardrop did a very good American accent but lost comparative projection. Katy Owen’s pitch and speed made her sound garbled at times.
The women’s toilets in the Royal Circle are appalling – just 3 cubicles. If a play is touring, we’d choose Salisbury Playhouse (by far the best seats, better stage, excellent rake), Poole Lighthouse (very good rake) or Chichester (best stages) over Bath every time. Bath tends to get the prestige tours and originates too. So we go. We were a long way back with poor sound at Bath. Much more relevant, we had seen the Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry at Chichester Minerva in the semi-round a few days before. Famous story adapted, lots of dance and music, and five star. The comparison really hits my rating of this weaker version of the same style.
It got good applause at the end.People left happily. Many laughed at the Professor’s antics whilst I grimaced. I’d say it went down well.
OK, I’m usually with the consensus or higher rating than the consensus. This time, I’m out on a limb. You can comment below.
TWO star **
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
5 star
Northern Arts Review ***** (York)
All About Theatre *****
4 star
The Telegraph, ****
Reviews Hub **** (Brighton)
Always Time For Theatre **** (York)
3 star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian *** (York)
Holly O’Mahoney, The Stage ***
Lily Hardman, Far Out ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
EMMA RICE
The Buddah of Suburbia, RSC 2024 (Director)
Blue Beard, by Emma Rice, Bath 2024
Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, Salisbury 2023
Malory Towers, on tour, Exeter 2019
Romantics Anonymous, Wanamaker Playhouse 2017
Tristan & Yseult, Kneehigh, Globe 2017
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, by Daniel Jamieson, Kneehigh / Bristol Old Vic
EWAN WARDROP
The Buddah of Suburbia, RSC 2024
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe 2016 (Bottom)
Much Ado About Nothing, Globe 2017 (Dogberry)
KATY OWEN
Blue Beard, Bath 2024
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017 (Malvolio)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Globe 2016 (Puck)
PATRYCJA KUJAWSKA
Blue Beard, Bath 2024
MIRABELLE GRIMAUD
Blue Beard, Bath 2024
Malory Towers, on tour, Exeter 2019
KARL QUEENSBOROUGH
Girl From The North Country, Old Vic, 2017
Peter Viney's Blog 
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