The 39 Steps

Dashing

The 39 Steps

by Patrick Barlow, after John Buchan

Fiery Angel at Richmond Theatre until 6^th April, then on tour until 3^rd August

Review by Harry Zimmerman

I knew that we were in for an unusual night when, a full three quarters of an hour before the performance, the audience were milling around the beautiful façade of Richmond Theatre, casting admiring glances at a vintage racing car, (identical to the models that graced my very first Scalextric set when I was a young lad), as it was hoisted into position outside the theatre entrance, offering unusual selfie opportunities.  Upon entering the auditorium, a selection of jazz and big-band classics from the 1930s further helped set the mood.

Presented by Fiery Angel, The 39 Steps was originally written as a novel by John Buchan in 1915 and was then famously adapted into what became an iconic 1935 film, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  This stage version is penned by Patrick Barlow from an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon.  It has had a long and successful run as a reliable and popular stalwart of fast paced, inventive theatre, having won the 2007 Olivier and What’s on Stage Awards for Best Comedy and picking up two Tony Awards the following year on Broadway.

Featuring four actors who take on 139 roles, in just over just over 100 minutes of fast paced, occasionally frenetic, performance, the play follows Richard Hannay on a crime caper filled with murder, double-crossing secret agents and romance.

There is nothing profound or significant to engage the analytical minds of an audience who were very much up for fun and laughter.  This production does exactly what it says on the tin, treating us to a full on, largely “in your face” theatrical romp, with the emphasis upon entertainment, occasional hilarity and a dazzling variety of invention.

At all times, the cast provide a knowing and witty commentary on the conventions and clichés inherent in Hitchcock’s treatment of this well-known thriller.

The theatrical convention of the ‘fourth wall’ is well and truly demolished from the opening scene.  By so doing, the audience is quickly drawn into an unspoken alliance with the cast, who are happy to share riotous scene changes, the “doubling up” of characterisation and the range of different characters employed to drive the narrative along.

To a large extent, the audience is encouraged to throw themselves into the unfolding story line and share in the apparently chaotic nature of the narrative, wondering what the actors will do next, and how they will extricate themselves from one predicament after another.

The story will be largely familiar to most. 

An extremely insouciant urbane English gentleman, Richard Hannay, struggling with a distinct lack of purpose in life, attempts to alleviate his boredom and listlessness by going to the theatre.

There, while watching a hammy vaudeville act, “Mr Memory”, Hannay rescues a sultry, mysterious and, (of course), heavy European-accented Annabella Schmidt.  This plunges the resourceful Hannay into mystery, political intrigue, a charge of murder, a life-threatening manhunt across the Scottish Highlands, and a dash of romance, before ending up saving England from the evil machinations of warmongering, perfidious foreign spies.  All in 105 minutes!

We follow Hannay’s flight, his daring escapes by and from a steam train, his brushes with death, his travels by speeding car, his confrontations with murderous enemies, his entanglement with the glamorous Annabella and awfully nice, yet plucky English gel Pamela, and the eventual thrilling climatic denouement at, where else, The London Palladium.  You get the idea.

“Speed, speed, speed”

Patrick Barlow

This cornucopia of intrigue, danger, thrills and spills is delivered by four inventive and energetic actors.

Tom Byrne gives us a three-piece suit wearing, archetypal English gentleman, with a fetching pencil moustache covering the stiffest of stiff upper lips.  He is engaging, likeable and extremely energetic, and easily gets the audience rooting for him from the off.

Safeena Ladha’s three very different characterisations are spot on, providing superbly observed foils for Hannay in every situation.  She has an instinctive comic timing, best employed during the early scenes in Hannay’s flat where, (spoiler alert!), she comes to a rather sticky end.

Eugene McCoy and Maddie Rice, baldly described as “Clown 1” and “Clown 2”, were consistently excellent, creating countless vignettes of always spot-on characterisation, ranging from simple Scottish crofters, villainous German spies, cod Scottish hoteliers, milkmen and memory practitioners.  Their energy and interplay is a joy to behold.

It is a popular idea nowadays in many restaurants, (especially when it comes to desserts), to offer the diner a deconstructed dish, such as the component parts of, say a trifle, laid out in various elements.  “The 39 Steps” does the same thing for the theatre.  What it offers, amidst the frantic narrative is to dismantle theatrical convention, to reveal its artifices and its constructs thereby revealing most of the tricks of the theatrical trade to the audience. 

We see the cast creating scenarios from the mere rearrangement of chairs, boxes, lecterns and packing cases, with the occasional large prop thrown in for good measure; a lamppost here, a doorframe there.  Suddenly we are on a train, in a fast car, or in a London pied à terre.

The cast are uniformly excellent in deftly manipulating the props to deliver these transitions effortlessly, and with great humour, for example in the to-ing and fro-ing involved in hauling a lamp post around on stage, to denote when a scene switches from inside a flat, to the street corner outside.  Particularly effective and amusing was the actors’ physically ruffling their scarves, hats, skirts and trousers to denote the wild winds of the Scottish moors.

Plaudits too for the sound and lighting team, as well as the pitch perfect costumes all of which, with the ingenious props, combined to deliver a perfect aural and visual landscape upon which the action unfolded.  The cyclorama employed in the chase scene across the Scottish moors was particularly amusingly effective.  It was a very nice touch to acknowledge the hard work of the backstage crew at the curtain call. 

One additional joy of this production, especially for those who are aficionados of film noir in general, and the work of Alfred Hitchcock in particular, is the overt tip of the hat to some of the classic films of the genre; whether it is seeing  a lot of birds perched on a road sign, Hannay racing along a field being pursued by a biplane (think North by North West), or the use of Bernard Herrmann’s screeching musical stabbing to accompany THAT shower scene, (here transposed to a Scottish waterfall), the game of Hitchcock bingo is an additional source of enjoyment for those audience members so inclined.  There is even an appearance from Hitchcock himself during the play.  I won’t tell you where or when …

This production stands or falls by the pace and energetic brio which the cast are able to deliver.  In an interview about his adaptation of the novel for the stage, Patrick Barlow says that his plea to all casts and directors of The 39 Steps is “speed, speed, speed”. 

It is certainly true that the faster the narrative is driven, the more fun everyone has, cast and audience alike.

To this end, this play would benefit from not having an interval.  It took a while in the second act for the pace to get back to the level it needed to be at, and there were a few longueurs, especially in the election address and, curiously, in the bedroom scene where Hannay and Pamela are handcuffed together.

However, these are minor quibbles.  What we have here is a funny, sometimes hilarious romp affectionately sending up a well-loved story and film genre, which sends the audience home with a smile on their face.

In these troubled times, who could ask for more than this?

Harry Zimmerman, April 2024

Photography by Mark Senior