That it was more a case of producers in the stalls rather than the usual celebrity actors was a tribute to Johnson's play, which combines his trademark comic writing with Hitchcockian suspense and William Dudley's state-of-the-art designs.
Dudley's video projections (seen to great effect in the Tom Stoppard trilogy The Coast of Utopia at the National Theatre last year) were a highly effective, atmospheric, part of the play's design.
Re-creating their performances at the Royal Court, where the show was initially launched, were William Hootkins as Alfred Hitchcock, Rosamund Pike as The Blonde, David Haig as a film expert and Fiona Glascott as his student, along with Owen McDonnell as The Blonde's violent but ultimately put-upon husband.
