North by Northwest at Alexandra Palace Theatre review: bursting with impish spirit

I’d reckoned without the scrappy inventiveness and impish spirit of Rice, working here with her company Wise Children and a host of co-producers, and occupying the atmospherically decayed theatre at Ally Pally. North by Northwest becomes an arch, handmade pastiche of the movie’s sense of dislocation and paranoia, from the moment Ewan Wardrop’s Thornhill bops onto the stage to Simon Baker’s soundtrack of noirish, dulcimer-heavy jazz, surrounded by a six-strong ensemble wearing the trenchcoat-and-trilby uniform of Cold War spies.