Danny Collins and Cast Photo by Rich Soublet II

As expected, Emma Rice's soaring imagination and brilliant stagecraft bring the story to the stage with energy, wit, and more than a little bit of old-fashioned silliness. Not to mention quite a bit of music and dance.

Hitchcock fans will likely be wondering, "Dancing? From the master of suspense?" The purists may dislike what Emma Rice has done with this classic, but if they could just get over themselves for a minute and remember that this take on North by Northwest is on stage and not the screen, they might like it as much as the film. Just in a different way.

For those who've never seen the film, it's a classic "ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances" story. Roger Thornhill (a brilliantly lithe Danny Collins) is a New York ad man who is mistaken for a CIA spy by some evil Russians, yet manages to outwit his pursuers at every turn, and, along the way, fall in love with the beautiful and mysterious Eve Kendall (Patrycja Kujawska), who is the paramour of evil genius Phillip Vandamm (Karl Queensborough).

If you have seen the movie (if you're like me, more than a dozen times), I won't spoil all the surprises Ms. Rice has in store for you. (The shower and the reveal of Mr. Rushmore were two of my–and the audience's–favorites.) Not in terms of the story–the major plot points are all there–but in how she chooses to adapt the key moments in the film so they work on stage. And there are dozens of moments that will astound you with their cleverness, as when she creates a cornfield using rolled-up and cut newspapers. There are also dozens of moments that will astound you with their simplicity, as when she uses suitcases with labels on their sides identifying locations or characters.

The staging is both monumental and delightfully human. Monumental in that set designer Rob Howell has created four tall structures that are composed of two frames which intersect each other, and which are mounted on casters so they can roll off and on stage and rotate, achieving some delightful effects. Upstage he has arranged a long row of old-fashioned suitcases (both the film and the play take place in 1959) under a rack of men's suits, which stretches some 40 feet or so across the stage.

The cast–mostly Brits, judging by their credits–lap up the opportunity to display their physical skills, and revel in the good vs. evil storyline. As Valerian and Anna (rather minor characters in the original, but upgraded here) Simon Oskarsson and Bryony Pennington are appropriately villainous, with sneering glares and oodles of malicious intent. There's a minor homoerotic storyline in the original film, with Martin Landau's character Leonard clearly having an unrequited lust for Vandamm, and Rice has kept this in place, allowing Simon to be the one who has the hots for Mr. VD.

As Vandamm, Queensborough exhibits the kind of quiet menace that was the hallmark of James Mason's take on the character. Rarely one to raise his voice, Vandamm shows his evil underbelly in witty wordplay with Roger Thornhill. When he is mocking Thornhill for playing different roles during his adventure, he says "You make this very room a theater," and then pauses ever so slightly and looks out at the audience as if to say, "see what we did there?"

Collins is a terrific dancer, as well as a talented comic actor, and the show seems to orbit around him, as it should. He is the object of obsession and interest not only for the equally skilled Kujawska, but also for Vandamm, and the Professor (Katy Owen), who leads the CIA team who monitor Thornhill's perils, not interfering with his quest because it suits his purposes.

The music Rice has selected is mostly from the era of the film, including songs like Peggy Lee's "Sans Souci" and Betty Hutton's "Orange Colored Sky." Rather than merely being background music, the songs are lip-synced by the performers, often while they are also dancing. Etta Murfitt is the choreographer, and she is to be lauded for such athletic, dynamic–and sometimes even very silly–dance moves.

As much as I enjoyed the two and half hours I spent at ACT's Toni Rembe Theater, I was slightly disappointed in Rice's dropping the line that allows Thornhill to escape from the clutches of Valerian and Anna when leaving an elevator. It would have been so easy to include and would add only seconds to the show. More disappointing is the final scene. It isn't just how she chose to stage the fight on the face of Mt. Rushmore–which is especially disappointing in that so much of her other choices are gold–it is that the final speech by the Professor (Katy Owen also does double duty as a sort of narrator, helping guide us through the action) veers too far into preaching. The story on its own gives us all we need to know in terms of fighting an evil empire; the final speech is only so much gilding of the lily.

Nonetheless, this delightful production of North by Northwest is, like the other works of Emma Rice's I have had the pleasure to experience, a tour de force of imaginative stagecraft and brilliant direction.

North by Northwest runs through October 18, 2026, at American Conservatory Theater, Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary Street, San Francisco CA. Performances are Tuesdays at 6:30pm, Wednesdays-Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2:00pm and Sundays at 1:00 pm. Tickets range from $25-$130, plus fees. For tickets and information, please visit www.act-sf.org.