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by Patrick Barlow, directed by Maria Aitken

Tricycle Theatre, Criterion Theatre

September 20, 2006-to September 5, 2015

“An Hilarious Film-to-Stage Adaptation”

A great first play to see after a flight from North America is THE 39 STEPS.  The play adapted by John Barlow partly from John Buchan’s 1915 novel and but more specifically from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film of the same name is absolutely hilarious.  The unstated premise seems to be that a theatre company with only four actors and no budget tries to stage this adventure story that involved myriad locations and characters.  The four actors play more than 130 roles and it includes every famous scene from the film including the chase on the Flying Scotsman and the thrilling conclusion in the London Palladium.  Both the humour and the wonder of the show is how they manage to do it. 

Simon Paisley Day in the Robert Donat role of bored Canadian Richard Hannay is the only actor to play only one role.  Josefina Gabrielle plays all the attractive females from the mysterious foreign spy Annabella, who sends him on his quest, to a humble crofter’s wife to Margaret, the Madeleine Carroll role, unwillingly handcuffed to Hannay.  Two others, Simon Gregor and James Topping, play everyone else male and female, sometimes with merely a change of hats as in the scene at the Edinburgh rail station when the two rapidly switch characters using the three hats each carries. 

The show is pure theatre with the simplest means suggesting the most complex scenes.  The scene at the Bridge of Forth is merely one ladder set atop two other ladders.  In the chase through the highlands, Gregor in an anorak plays the landscape from boulders to clefts.  What is especially delightful about the show is that while is sends up the clichés of the adventure genre it also celebrates them to that you still get caught up in the story. 

At the same time as you laugh you also admire the amazing precision in mime and movement that all four actors display.  A picture frame held exactly in place by a succession of hands makes it seems like the window it’s supposed to be. 

Stage adaptations should stand on their own, and this play does as an example of sheer theatricality.  However, to appreciate the wit of the stage imagery fully, I strongly recommend seeing the Hitchcock film shortly beforehand, unless you already know it quite well.  I saw the film just before I left on my trip and can assure you that the more familiar you are with the source film in particular and with Hitchcock in general, the more you will get out of the show.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: The cast changes so frequently, you have to check the website below to know who is in it – not that that should be a deciding factor. 

Photo: Rufus Wright as Richard Hanney with Laura Rogers as Pamela/Annabella/Margaret and Dermot Canavan and Sean Kearns as Man 1 and Man 2. ©2011 Tristram Kenton.

For tickets, visit www.love39steps.com.