North by Northwest – Liverpool Playhouse
Billed as a ‘theatre legend’ in the production’s accompanying notes, celebrated director Emma Rice’s adaptation of this Hitchcock classic for the stage is sumptuous and visually arresting but sadly more style over substance with its lack of storyline.
It would be strange would it not, poses The Professor (Katy Owen) who narrates much of the evening’s proceedings, if in a city of seven million people, one man was never mistaken for another. And in a flash we are transported to the bright lights of the big city – New York – in 1959, where we meet reluctant hero Roger Thornhill (Ewan Wardrop), whose mistimed phone call to his mother lands him smack bang in the middle of a Cold War conspiracy. Now he’s on the run dodging spies and airplanes as he tries to evade the clutches of villain Phill...
