The 39 Steps

Trying to adapt an Alfred Hitchcock piece from film to stage is never an easy task, but this one was made all the more challenging by having just four actors (Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, Katherine Kingsley, Richard Braine and Dan Starkey) playing 139 roles. Still, Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of The 39 Steps has more than earned the Olivier Awards and Tony Awards it has collected so far.

Bruce-Lockhart plays Richard Hannay, a man who finds himself caught up in a real life spy-story after a night out at the theatre. Racing across the country tailed by secret agents, Hannay must find out what the 39 Steps refers to before the secrets get smuggled out of the country.

The cast are on top form, and not once is a line missed (a few prop cues seem a few seconds slower than they should have been, but this may have been intentional to draw laughter). It seems unfair to Bruce-Lockhart and Kingsley to label Braine and Starkey as stars of the show, but the pair provided most of the comedy moments. Playing over 100 characters between the two of them, often having several hats onstage and switching between them to symbolise a change in character, the pair manage to bring a sense of individualism to each role, regardless of how long that character is on stage for.

The play also relies on a great deal of audience imagination to run smoothly. Not only does that audience have to accept that Braine and Starkey are going to be changing character every ten seconds, but also has to imagine the scenery that just isn’t there. A prime example of this is the chase across a train rooftop.

The scene takes place on a train to Edinburgh. The only props used are a trio of luggage trunks to double as both seats and rooftop, and a station sign wheeled in from the side of the stage to amusement from the audience. The chase scene relies on the audience’s willingness to go along with the idea that Bruce-Lockhart and Starkey jumping from trunk to trunk is a race across the rooftop. There are a number of scenes like this throughout the film, and while it may seem like children ‘playing pretend’ at first, it never gets old, and it runs in such a way that the audience is never left looking at something they can’t understand.

Tricks like this keep the audience amused; a scene composed entirely of shadows onto the closed stage curtain is soon followed by a scene in which Braine and Starkey go through four or five characters each in about two minutes, followed by a bed springing from a wardrobe. If that sounds bizarre to just read about, imagine how that comes across on stage.

As if this weren’t enough for you to keep up with, there are several Hitchcock nods scattered in through the performance.

Proof that you don’t need big sets and a huge cast to put on an entertaining show.