As long as there are such things as surprise hits, we still have a chance in the theatre. Patrick Barlow’s stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film version of John Buchan’s spy thriller, The 39 Steps, is such a case.
London mainstream audiences are less familiar than we are with this style of imaginative direction – actors playing multiple roles (across gender), clowning, physical theatre, mime, and even shadow puppets. Consequently, a slick and innovative entertainment, it was catapulted to the West End to such delight of patrons it is booking until June 2008. See my London Theatre round-up January 2007.
The South African production follows the London directions meticulously – four actors play a 150 characters and create the shifting scenery from rocky Scottish landscapes to train carriages with just two ladders and four travellers’ trunks. The local production may not have the extraordinary comic Simon Gregor, though David Clatworthy and Johann Baird as the clowns do a fine job and Louise Saint-Claire is better than London’s Catherine McCormack as the femme fatale foreign agent Annabella Schmidt. Graham Hopkins as Richard Hannay, the quintessential, British gentleman adventurer at the height of Empire – unswerving, suave and heroic, puts his own stamp on the part with that hallmark twinkle in his eye.
Hannay is the classic hero – alone saving the country pursued by clumsy plods and nefarious foreign agents where no one believes him when he tells the truth only when he makes up a story they’d prefer.
Director Alan Swerdlow – who excels in this style (with his Around the World in 80 Days for example) is the perfect man at the helm, not least because of his percipience for film and his penchant for spoofery. The script follows the Hitchcock version right down to the comic stage business of the handcuffed fugitives trying to climb over a fence. It’s theatre for theatre lovers.
