Content area
Full Text
HITCHCOCK BLONDE
(ROYAL COURT JERWOOD THEATER DOWNSTAIRS; 376 SEATS; L26 ($40.50) TOP)
LONDON A Royal Court Theater presentation, in association with Maidstone Prods, and Sonia Friedman Prods., of a play in three acts written and directed by Terry Johnson. Sets, costumes, video design, William Dudley; lighting, Simon Corder; sound, Ian Dickinson; video realization, Dick Straker, Sven Ortel; video post-production and animation, Richard Kenyon. Opened April 4, 2003. Reviewed April 5. Running time: 3 HOURS.
Hitch ................................ William Hootkins
Blonde ................................ Rosamund Pike
Husband .......................... Owen McDonnell
Alex ............................................ David Haig
Nicola .................................... Fiona Glascott
With: Alexander Delamere, Victoria Gay.
Terry Johnson evidently has never come across a famous person he hasn't wanted to put onstage. From Einstein to Marilyn Monroe (thinly disguised in "Insignificance"), Freud and Dali in "Hysteria" on to the gang of "Carry On" screen icons in "Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick," writer-director Johnson has pioneered a new brand of what-if theater that his latest play, "Hitchcock Blonde," takes to an extravagantly messy extreme. What if Hitch (played in this stage incarnation by uncanny look- and sound-alike William Hootkins) owed his careerlong obsession with blondes to an early, all-but-forgotten work that found the grand master of the imperiled heroine embarked on his own private Grand Guignol? The hypothesis raises infinitely more questions than it answers, especially as attenuated across three long, intricately linked acts that make a comparably structured play like "Arcadia" seem a narrative...