The 39 Steps

There is nothing profound, meaningful, significant, ‘woke’ or relevant going on here.  Instead, we get a couple of hours of sheer entertainment, of hilarious fun, of amazement at the endless inventions and transformations, and at knowing, witty commentary on the conventions and cliches of the story itself.  All created for us by just four skilled and apparently inexhaustible actors. 

Forget about the ‘fourth wall’; it’s not just broken; it’s entirely absent so that we can see how riotously phoney the scene changes are, how obvious the transparent ‘doubling up’ or changes of characters are (often within a single scene), as well as the creaky contrivances of ‘theatre’.  Not for a moment do we believe any of it.  Yet we do understand what is going on and we are completely held by what these actors will do next, how they will get their characters out of one predicament after another. 

Buchan’s 1915 thriller novel, adapted in Charles Bennett’s 1935 screenplay and by Hitchcock’s masterful direction provide the story spine that holds it together.  A story spine is definitely needed here or this whole shebang would be merely a series of sketches.

A very laid back, urbane, three-piece suit gentleman, Richard Hannay (Sorab Kaikobad), rendered almost inert by ennui and nihilism, decides to do something utterly meaningless.  So he goes to the theatre.  There, while watching a sort of vaudeville act – ‘Mr Memory’ (Jackson McGovern) and his Assistant (Charlie Cousins) – just two of the one hundred-and forty-six-characters Cousins and McGovern play – Hannay rescues the sultry, mysterious and heavy accented Annabella Schmidt (Yvette Turner).  And he is plunged into mystery, intrigue, a charge of murder, a life-threatening manhunt, a spot of romance, and of saving Britain from perfidious foreign spies!  His flight, his daring escapes by and from the Flying Scotsman train, his brushes with death, his travels by speeding car, his confrontations with murderous enemies, his passing through door after door…  How do you do any of that on stage?  How can you?

We must say, however, that The 39 Steps does drag a little in places – particularly in Act II, where the show starts to take itself a little too seriously and we get some ‘real’ dialogue scenes – like in a real play.  Of course we must include the suggestive scene where Hannay, handcuffed to feisty, sceptical Pamela (Yvette Turner again), helps her remove her wet stockings…  But after so much slapstick, leaping about, brilliant mime and lightening costume changes, we just want more – and more…  In Act I, when Cousins and McGovern switch hats among three different characters and it does go on a bit, Hannay remarks, ‘Get on with it!’  Thus adding another layer to the play with the play.  I’m sure the show will tighten as its run continues.

What The 39 Steps does is dismantle theatre to reveal its artifices, its tricks, its absolute need for us to suspend our disbelief, to reveal the impossibility of showing some things on stage – and then doing them anyway.  We watch, spellbound, as the cast, in plain view, rearranges some boxes and packing cases, and now we’re in a train, or now we’re running in a powerful head wind along the roof of the train… and then by wheeling on an all-purpose door and shifting some other boxes, we’re with Hannay when he seeks refuge with a grumpy crofter (Charlie Cousins), and the crofter’s younger blonde wife Margaret (Yvette Turner again) who must be resisted…

Plaudits too for designer Eloise Kent who had to think up and provide not just the proscenium stage within the stage, and the myriad costumes – hats, coats, cloaks, kilts, and frocks – but all the necessary boxes, doors, banners, curtains, liquor cabinets, armchairs, dolls, bagpipes, a kitten, a roaring fire and a cyclorama of the moors.  In all of this, there’s an added layer for Hitchcock fans as the ‘drama’ on stage is enhanced by entirely appropriate if ironic music from Psycho, North by Northwest, Notorious and more.  Justin Gardam’s sound adds atmosphere to the music of Bernhard Herman and others and Niklas Pajanti’s lighting transports Hannay through time and space.

As do these wonderful players, all of whom unwaveringly throw themselves into this comic fandango.  You do have to be very good to ham it up like this, to play blatant cliches, and to overact so outrageously – and not look as if you’re just… amateur.  These performers never do look amateur: they succeed admirably.

Michael Brindley   

Photographer: Cameron Grant