Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock’s most glamorous man-on-the-run thriller, “North by Northwest,” stars Cary Grant as wrongly accused advertising man Roger Thornhill running from New York to Chicago to an Indiana cornfield, back to Chicago and finally to South Dakota where he’s literally atop the Mount Rushmore monument.
In reimagining the popular 1959 movie for the stage, British playwright/director Emma Rice acknowledged that as far as portraying travel is concerned “with theater, you don’t have far you can go.”
But for her theatrical production of “North by Northwest,” making its North American debut next week at the Old Globe under Rice’s direction, she’s relied on a set created by “my amazing designer Rob Howell. It allows me to really keep transforming this small space that is the stage and take us across America.”
British actor-director Emma Rice’s “North By Northwest” will be presented next month at The Old Globe. (Emma Rice)
Rice is also relying on a versatile cast of seven that portrays more than 40 characters, including Danny Collins as Roger Thornhill, Patrycja Kujawska as undercover CIA agent and romantic interest Eve Kendall, and Katy Owen as the Professor, a role expanded upon from the Hitchcock film that also is utilized as the story’s narrator.
It’s the Eve Kendall character, played by Eva Marie Saint in the movie, that attracted Rice, who has previously adapted films such as “Brief Encounters” and “The Red Shoes.”
Cary Grant in an iconic scene from the 1959 Hitchcock thriller “North by Northwest.” (MGM Studios)
“I thought about Hitchcock for a long time,” Rice said. “He’s quite problematic in the modern day for how he treats women. I love ‘North by Northwest,’ but one of my primary reasons why is I think Eve Kendall is a feminist icon and he treats her with enormous respect. I find fantastic her journey through the film and what she thinks she is and what she learns she is to be.
“Hitchcock loved a scared woman (character). But as a female and an artist I don’t wish to linger on that. I wish to linger on women who survive, who thrive, who are smart. Eve Kendall takes that blonde, takes that sex and brings her intellect and soul into that. She is the character who has the most at stake,” Rice said.
Mirabelle Gremaud, left, Patrycja Kujawska, Ewan Wardrop, Simon Oskarsson and Katy Owen in a scene from the touring production of “North by Northwest,” opening July 3 at The Old Globe. (Steve Tanner)
Kujawska, who has played Eve Kendall onstage in the United Kingdom, reprises the role at the Globe. “We are in a slightly different time,” she said. “Eve was played by an actress who was 32, but in the film she was saying she was 27. My part is for a much more mature woman with more experience. They’re much more equal now, Roger and Eve. She is not just a trophy young blonde. She’s a person who is deeply experienced and determined to fight for the right things.”
Like Kujawska, Owen is reprising her Professor role in the show’s North American debut.
“He’s a 75-year-old man (played by Leo G. Carroll in the film) and I’m a 44-year-old Welsh woman, but I’m also trying to inhabit that and make it believable and make an audience feel like they’re in safe hands,” Owen said. “I have a huge amount of text to speak. It’s important when you play the part of the narrator that you work out why you’re speaking, a reason why you’re telling the story.
“The play has a lovely marriage of drama and clowning so there’s lots of silly physicality, but you also have to hit the heartstrings in certain moments and real Jacobean danger in other moments. Very much like a Hitchcock film. It’s like a rollercoaster ride, so it’s my job that the audience feels every twist and turn.”
Katy Owen and Ewan Wardrop in a scene from the touring production of “North by Northwest,” opening July 3 at The Old Globe. (Steve Tanner)
How this is accomplished onstage as opposed to in the film is an expression of one director’s style vs. another.
“I love Hitchcock, I think he’s the master storyteller,” said Rice. “He’s very different from me. He’s a lot about what the audience doesn’t know and I’m about what the audience does know. I’m an emotional theater director and he’s all in the mind. So we’re quite a good balance.”
Collins, who plays Roger Thornhill, is new to the “North by Northwest” company and calls it “wonderful” to bring the Cary Grant character to the theater.
“I hadn’t seen the film until the first round of auditions,” he recalled. “I’ve watched it about four times now and three other Cary Grant films. I love his versatility, his charm, his low-keyness, his charisma and his smoothness.
“I haven’t taken any specific notes to mimic him, but I’m watching him a lot and I believe that is being absorbed. Cary has that wonderful goofy side and he can also be really serious.”
Kujawska said she watched the original movie only “at the very beginning of the process. I thought that was it. I don’t want to go back to it because I didn’t want to mimic my character. I wanted to make her my own. I wanted to know the story and the atmosphere and then move away from it.”
Being veterans of the British production, Kujawska and Owen are teaching newcomer Collins that the play requires a lot of stamina.
“The pace is quite fast,” said Kujawska. “You blink and you miss a piece of information.”
Owen added that “You’re constantly busy so you don’t get a moment to notice how tired you are until the end, by which time you compliment yourself with a nice glass of beer.”
Like the movie screenplay, which was written by Ernest Lehman, Rice’s adaptation features intricate plot points and witty dialogue.
“I dare to hold my hand out to Hitchcock,” said Rice. “I need to be at my storytelling top form. You have to work every beat out so that the audience knows what’s happening. The film is jaw-droppingly clever.”
Kujawska pointed out, however, that Rice is also using physicality and props and even a little audience participation to tell the complicated “North by Northwest” tale.
“If she could tell the story without any words, she would try to do it,” Kujawska said of Rice. “Words are the least interesting medium for her. The heart of the story is that somebody’s identity was stolen and how does that feel when someone tells you that you are someone else? How does that change your world?”
The answers come Friday when “North by Northwest,” a co-production with Kay & McLean Productions and Jonathan Church Theatre Productions, begins previews on the Old Globe’s main Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage.
‘North by Northwest’
When: Previews, July 3-8. Opens July 9 and runs through Aug. 2. 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays
Where: Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego
Tickets: $43 and up
Phone: 619-234-5623
Online: theoldglobe.org