HLT OLD BOY DIRECTING FOR ATC

16 March 2022

 Simon Phillips, one of this country’s most internationally successful theatre directors and an award-winning former HLT director and actor, returns home this year with a production he created at Melbourne Theatre Company and is now restaging for Auckland Theatre Company. Frantic and fun, inventive and intriguing, Alfred Hitchcock’s trailblazing thriller North by Northwest has been boldly reimagined for the stage in this adaptation by expat playwright Carolyn Burns, Simon’s partner. The season will open at the ASB Waterfront Theatre on October 25 and run until November 19. New ATC Artistic Director and CEO Jonathan Bielski says, “Simon Phillips has brilliantly adapted the classic film into an unmissable theatrical tour de force, which has delighted audiences around the world and now becomes his homecoming.”

Check out this link to see Simon chatting at length about his current work and career.

The plot of North by Northwest follows suave Mad Ave advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill, whose uneventful life is turned upside down when a case of mistaken identity turns him into a framed fugitive thrust into a world of spies, manhunts, mystery and romance. In this spectacular blockbuster of a production, the twists, turns and tensions of Hitchcock’s masterpiece come to life on stage, complete with car chases, plane crashes and the famous final cliff-hanger on Mt Rushmore. 

Simon’s father, Hugh Phillips, designed the original Howick Little Theatre building in 1974 and he and his wife, Pam, were very involved in the theatre’s early days, joining in 1960.


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