{"id":474654,"date":"2026-09-24T22:58:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T22:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/474654\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T22:58:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T22:58:26","slug":"review-north-by-northwest-is-an-insult-to-hitchcock-at-act-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/474654\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: \u2018North By Northwest\u2019 Is an Insult to Hitchcock at ACT in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some reason, the sophisticated film gets reimagined as a zany comedy, with stereotypes and cheap gags.<\/p>\n

Sep 24, 2026<\/p>\n

Updated 3:08 pm PT<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

Simon Oskarsson, Katy Owen and Ewan Wardrop in \u2018North by Northwest.\u2019\u00a0(Steve Tanner)<\/p>\n

I cannot tell you how much I hated North By Northwest, which opened this week at ACT<\/a> in San Francisco<\/a>. It is an insult to the source material of Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s 1959 film, and an insult to the audience\u2019s intelligence. I ran from it as soon as I could, muttering obscenities to anyone within earshot.<\/p>\n

This production\u2019s first abomination is a shift in tone from a sophisticated, understated thriller to an over-the-top comedy, rife with insipid stereotypes and cheap gags. The second is the near-constant presence onstage of a narrator, who sucks the life out of any scene by overexplaining the action. The third is regular interruptions from songs by 1950s female pop vocalists like Peggy Lee and Betty Hutton, which turn into lip-synced dance numbers by whichever actor has the misfortune to be on stage.<\/p>\n

The fourth is the production\u2019s reliance on a surface-level 1950s nostalgia. The fifth is a finger-wagging for anyone who might problematically harbor any similar nostalgia. The sixth is the absurd plot coda and forced social commentary it tacks on at the end, in a sudden and jarring switch from slapstick to earnestness, with an entreaty to the audience that we \u201cnever again\u201d return to the tactics of the Cold War, and have hope, or something.<\/p>\n

You get the idea.<\/p>\n

\"\"(L\u2013R) Bryony Pennington, Simon Oskarsson, Katy Owen, Danny Collins, Karl Queensborough and Patrycja Kujawska in \u2018North by Northwest.\u2019\u00a0(Rich Soublet II)<\/p>\n

Adapted and directed by Emma Rice, the play is a complete misreading of Hitchcock\u2019s original film, and its central theme of a mistaken identity that compounds upon itself. Roger Thornhill, who works in advertising, is misapprehended as a CIA operative and abducted by foreign agents. He soon finds that nobody trusts or believes him \u2014 not his captors, nor the police, the courts and even his own mother. In Hitchcock\u2019s version, this is illustrated by a disturbing moment as an elevator of strangers breaks into laughter at Thornhill\u2019s notion that someone could be out to murder him. Onstage at ACT, the scene is played as a joke, the punchline of which is Ella Fitzgerald singing \u201cGet Happy\u201d over the P.A. and everyone breaking into a hip-wagging go-go dance party.<\/p>\n

What is this play trying to do? Why does it turn Cary Grant\u2019s distinguished Thornhill into an uber-chalant<\/a> bro? Why does it expect we\u2019ll think a man in women\u2019s clothing is funny? Why do Thornhill (Danny Collins) and love interest Eve Kendall (Patrycja Kujawska), who in Ernest Lehman\u2019s film screenplay bounce beautifully around each other, have such little chemistry onstage despite reciting the same lines? Why is the play obsessed with the phrase \u201cglobal security,\u201d mocking it repeatedly, as if staving off World War III was not a worthy goal? Why is a play set in 1959 using so many songs \u2014 Wayne Newton\u2019s \u201cHeart,\u201d Nina Simone\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Let Me Be Misunderstood,\u201d an instrumental knockoff of Isaac Hayes\u2019 \u201cShaft\u201d \u2014 from the 1960s and \u201970s? Why does it treat the plot like fluff but then have the narrator turn somber and wonder, out loud, \u201cWhen will the killings stop?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Simon Oskarsson, Danny Collins and Bryony Pennington in \u2018North by Northwest.\u2019\u00a0(Rich Soublet II)<\/p>\n

I have a guess for some of this, and that\u2019s the successful nine-year run in London of The 39 Steps, a stage play adapted from the Hitchcock film that\u2019s closest, thematically, to North By Northwest. Like this production, The 39 Steps utilized a small cast playing many characters, and a sparse but modular set, with quick pacing. But The 39 Steps, on stage, trusted the audience. This North By Northwest assumes the audience isn\u2019t smart enough to follow the plot, so the narrator (Katy Owen) leads call-and-response sessions with us to remember who\u2019s who.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also focused on the wrong thing. The core of North By Northwest is one man\u2019s need for identity and trust after he\u2019s been stripped of it. At ACT, it\u2019s spies, both onstage and off. A prompt in the lobby asks patrons for their favorite conspiracy. Walking tours associated with the production visit sites of \u201cCold War paranoia and espionage\u201d near Union Square. Even Hitchcock himself, speaking with Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, called the inclusion of government secrets in the film \u201cmy best MacGuffin, and by that I mean the emptiest, the most nonexistent, and the most absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the play\u2019s awkward new ending, and retconning the sexism of the 1950s: why pick on North By Northwest? Why not undertake that with dim-witted pap like Kiss Me Stupid, or Under the Yum-Yum Tree? Or why not adapt a Hitchcock screenplay with more complex gender dynamics to explore, like Marnie?<\/p>\n

\"\"Danny Collins as Roger Thornhill in \u2018North by Northwest.\u2019\u00a0(Rich Soublet II)<\/p>\n

I feel compelled here to note some of the good. The set \u2014 a rack of suits, four revolving doors and a parade of suitcases \u2014 gets repurposed in semi-interesting ways. The actors\u2019 quick changes and choreography can be impressive. The famous cropduster and Mount Rushmore scenes have some inventive stage adaptation. Bryony Pennington (as Anna and others) is a standout, and an effervescent Owen as the narrator and Professor makes the best with what she\u2019s given.<\/p>\n

But these are crowded out by the rest of it all, which is just plain disrespectful to one of history\u2019s best films. If, five years from now, we see a zany Gong Show-style staging of On the Waterfront with disco interludes, I\u2019ll know which play to blame.<\/p>\n

\u2018North By Northwest\u2019 runs through Oct. 18 at the Toni Rembe Theater (415 Geary St.) in San Francisco. Tickets and more information here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For some reason, the sophisticated film gets reimagined as a zany comedy, with stereotypes and cheap gags. Sep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-474654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}