Reviews

Those of a certain age might remember the classic Hitchcock film of the same name which consolidated the spy genre of the innocent man on the run. This stage version of The 39 Steps uses most of the original dialogue, delivered by only four actors, to create a rollicking parody.

Jarod Goldsmith (6’ 1” with a stylish pencil thin moustache) immediately establishes the tone of the work with one expertly raised eyebrow. Goldsmith, as John Hannay, is the only actor not undertaking another role. His is a pivotal and assured presence.

Thousands have applauded Kip Williams’ cine-theatre version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the STC show is now en route to Broadway and the West End.

With the same creative team, Williams has now adapted and directed this hypnotic film noir telling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s horror story. Again the setting is London in the late 1800’s, a time when new sciences and a fevered Romanticism curdled into these troubled tales of good and evil.

When the roll is taken for Angela Betzien’s Chalkface, it is unsurprising that the author, Director Jess Arthur and most of the cast have one or two teachers in the family.

Here is a gripping and profound reworking of Euripides’ ancient Greek tragedy.  First performed in 431 BCE, the essence of its plot in this production is untouched: ‘a mother kills her children.’  Why?  That is the question posed at the start and by the end of this skilfully stylised melodrama that question is unmistakeably answered.