All the thrills and crop-dusting suspense of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 thriller film 'North By Northwest' have been adapted from the silver screen to the stage by Director Simon Phillips and Playwright Carolyn Burns.
A stellar line up of talent has been announced to join Matt Day in the leading role of man on the run, Roger O. Thornhill and Amber McMahon as femme fatale Eve Kendall for the 2018/19 Australian seasons of the triumphant stage adaption.
We speak with Carolyn Burns to discuss how she adapted the story for stage and one of the most iconic chase scenes in 20th century American cinema.
How did you approach adapting the long and complex tale of 'North By Northwest' into a tight stage production?
It was actually quite a long and complex process as well. My challenge was to ensure the characters get their chance to shine without needing those close ups, and make sure the plot is as exciting and funny and thrilling as it was in the film. Actually, the logistics of the stage were in some ways very helpful to me. I knew I had to focus on the core events and find a succinct way of bridging between them, without the help of establishing shots and evocative crowd scenes. So the sense of the chase and racing between one location and the next that pervades the film is provided by the cast moving furniture at breakneck speed.
Did you have a specific vision in mind for the adaptation when you started?
I wanted to honour the film of course, but I was also wanted to slightly amplify its vibrancy for a contemporary audience. I was specifically interested in the cold war aspect of the plot, and ended up doing a great deal of research into what was happening both then and now. The cold war, spy-versus-spy element, which Hitchcock somewhat underplayed, and especially the sense that there was no scrupulous difference between the Americans and the Russians; all that really appealed to me. And, in the final design, the director, Simon Phillips, created a small booth on either side of stage, so we, the audience, could occasionally spy on the spies. It sounds complicated, I know, but I think is very theatrical, and great fun.
Image © Darren Thomas
What was the most important thing for you as a playwright when you adapted to film to the stage?
Creating characters the audience are curious about, fascinated by, and believe in. And, because it is a thriller, you want to make them hold their breath at times. Of course, when you’re adapting a film for the stage, one of your prime responsibilities is to make up for the fact that the audience is deprived of close-ups. I wanted to make sure that the central relationships remained potent in ‘wide shot’. Of course we had to find a way of realising the ‘impossible’ sections of the film, but that’s a different issue.
Is it a strict re-telling, or has there been some creative licence taken?
It both honours the film and puts it in inverted commas. Of course the film is not very serious about itself either – it’s a thriller and a comedy at the same time – but we definitely want the audience to know we’re having some fun with a classic, while taking advantage of all the brilliant thrills and spills it has to offer.
The show was first staged in 2015; how has it changed or developed over the years?
Not to any great degree. We’ve cut a little, polished things here and there, but the initial production was a runaway success, so we didn’t need to alter much.
Are you happy with how Director Simon Phillips has brought your adaptation to the stage?
Well, we worked together on it almost from the outset – it wasn’t some much ‘here’s my script, what are you going to do with it?’ – we developed it together, along with the designer/lighting designer, Nick Schlieper, because the adaptation was inextricably linked to the production concept.
Hitchcock has a signature style that marks his films as his own; have you tried to retain this in the stage production?
To some extent yes. We’ve honoured the very particular colour palette he used in the film, and he himself makes an appearance of course. And I think the acting style has been adhered to, though not slavishly. But of course it’s now a work of theatre, and has its own very proud style.
From New York to South Dakota to Mount Rushmore, how does the play achieve the sense of distance that's portrayed in the film?
Probably less successfully to be honest. The key ‘location’ scenes are represented with a filmic element in the stage production, which gives them a particular sense of place, but you’ve hit on something that the theatre doesn’t do as well as film, for obvious reasons.
The plane scene is perhaps the most iconic in the film – how did you address the logistical challenge posed by the physical restrictions of the theatre?
We bent our minds to this, and the final chase across Mt Rushmore, before we even agreed to pursue the adaptation. Because these scenes were the iconic moments we knew if we didn’t have a solution to them, there wasn’t much point in proceeding. So in many ways they led the concept of the adaptation and the production, and in a rather fortuitous way my own interest in the East vs West tensions in the story played into that that as well. But you’ll have to come to the show to find out exactly how it all works.
Do you remember the first time you saw the film and the impact it had on you?
Yes. I first saw it when I was a script writing student at AFTRS in Sydney. The design department made us all look at the first ten minutes of the film from a design perspective, because of its modernist approach. Both the theme and the tone of the film are all there, in the extraordinary main title sequence. I won’t go on about it, but it was brilliant. We watched the film several times, to see how the design played out throughout the entire story, and adored it. Easy to understand why 'North By Northwest' was, and still is, considered to be one of the top one hundred best films ever made.
