IT is, apparently, nothing more than coincidence that Hitchcock Blonde is being staged precisely when the Hitchcock biopic opens on the silver screen.
Hull Truck Theatre’s regional premiere is timed instead to mark the tenth anniversary of the play’s West End debut.
What play and film – and other Hitch studies – share is a focus on the film auteur’s endless fascination with bottle blondes: his peroxide preference explained by his belief that “blondes make the best victims”.
Terry Johnson’s story of sex and obsession has three overlapping timelines, beginning with a world-weary modern-day film and media studies lecturer, Alex (Nigel Hastings) being newly enthused by the discovery of film reel from a lost 1919 Hitchcock work and the chance to invite student Nicola to look through the frames at his Greek villa.
Nicola (Augustina Seymour) probably should not have accepted. His intentions are not exactly honourable, and time will expose her troubled history of self-harm behind the blonde, bright, opnionated northern front.
The 1919 film stock, shown on screen, also has sex and obsession at its core, as does timeline number three, wherein Hitch (Alexander Delamere) is interviewing the never named Blonde (Rosalie Craig) in typically blunt, callous fashion in 1959 for a Psycho role over a Dover sole lunch.
He eats, she doesn’t, a distillation of how their one-way relationship as director/blonde bait will work. In Johnson’s dialogue for Hitch, this is a meeting of the muse and the amusing, though it is frankly abusive too.
Delamere stressed in his interview with The Press that his performance was not an impersonation, and nor is it a caraictaure. It is instead the essence: the silhouette, the light-footed gait, the deathly-slow London-faux posh voice. You are drawn to him but repulsed too, a Hitch to make your conscience itch.
As the stories fold in on each other, Hitchcock Blonde mirrors the thriller structure and themes of Hitchcock’s own work, wittily and smartly in Natalie Abrahami’s measured, precise production but without being devastatingly enlightening.
Hitchcock Blonde, Hull Truck Theatre, Hull, until Saturday. Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here