The 39 Steps
Theatre Royal Brighton
until Saturday 20th July 2024
The 39 Steps was originally a 1935 British spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. It is loosely based on the 1915 novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan and concerns a Canadian civilian in London, Richard Hannay who becomes caught up in preventing an organisation of spies called “The 39 Steps” from stealing British military secrets. Mistakenly accused of the murder of a counter-espionage agent, Hannay goes on the run to Scotland and becomes tangled up with an attractive woman, Pamela, while hoping to stop the spy ring and clear his name. Two inferior films followed in 1959 with Kenneth More playing Hannay and in 1978 which starred Robert Powell.
The original concept and production of a four-actor parody version of the story was written by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon, and premiered in 1996. Patrick Barlow rewrote this adaptation in 2005. Here, one actor plays the hero whilst an actress (or sometimes actor) plays the three women with whom he has romantic entanglements; and two other actors play every other character in the show, each occasionally playing multiple characters at once. Thus the film’s serious spy story is given a comedic twist.
As Hannay, Tom Byrne complete with pencil-moustache is superb, charming, innocent and unruffled in equal measures. Safeena Ladha plays the three love interests and despite changing wigs could have been more distinguishable in her characterisations.
The two ‘clowns’ who portray all of the rest of the characters Hannay encounters on his journey to and from Scotland are played by Eugene McCoy and Maddie Rice. We meet a theatre impresario, a memory man, travelling salesmen, various police officers, newspaper vendors, a stationmaster, copious spies, Scottish farm workers, hoteliers and political activists. Rice is splendid however it is McCoy who steals the show with his Rowan Atkinson-esque face and extraordinarily flexible body.
I particularly loved the numerous references to other Hitchcock films using music, dialogue and even shadow puppetry. I probably missed as many as I spotted which include Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho and The Birds. And there was a lovely nod to the backstage crew at the final curtain call, a group of people who are easily forgotten when celebrating a show’s huge success.
This is a classic production with its innovative theatrical style bringing a classic novel to the stage for a very silly but very entertaining evening. It is certainly worth seeing on tour if you have never seen the production before or even if you have like me, catch it again.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Reviewer: Patric Kearns
Photo: Mark Senior