The 39 Steps

Play poster

Tonight my parents took us to see a play put on by a local theater company.    We watched a presentation of The 39 Steps with Lamplighter's Theater Co.

The 39 Steps is a melodrama adapted from the 1915 novel by John Buchan and the 1935 film by Alfred Hitchcock. Patrick Barlow wrote the adaptation, based on the original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon of a two-actor version of the play. 

The play's concept calls for the entirety of the 1935 adventure film The 39 Steps to be performed with a cast of only four. One actor plays the hero, Richard Hannay, 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: heroes, villains, men, women, children and even the occasional inanimate object. This often requires lightning fast quick-changes and occasionally for them to play multiple characters at once. Thus the film's serious spy story is played mainly for laughs, and the script is full of allusions to (and puns on the titles of) other Alfred Hitchcock films, including Rear Window, Psycho, Vertigo and North by Northwest.
--from Wikipedia article, The 39 Steps (play)

1935 movie poster

The play was hilarious.  As mentioned above there were only four people in the cast--three men and one woman.  The two actors that switched out into other characters were excellent as they pretended to be a variety of people, sometimes two different people in the same scene.

I haven't seen the Hitchcock movie, but now I would like to.  I realize that it is quite different than the play, which was intended to be a spoof of the movie.  However, knowing the plot of the play I think I would enjoy the movie and seeing the similarities.  I did enjoy seeing the many times that Hitchcock's film titles were referenced in the movie--often quite obviously, to the accompaniment of laughter from the audience.


My parents apparently have season tickets to this theater company.  Most of their productions have a larger cast, but this one was excellent with only four people (the two changing actors also served as on-screen stage hands).  I haven't seen many plays, but I can appreciate how the medium is different from film.  The switching of props and humor that permeated the entirety of the play wouldn't have transitioned well to the big screen.  However, on a small stage it worked perfectly and made for an amazing evening.  If you have the opportunity to see a stage production of The 39 Steps then take it.  You won't regret it!

~Matt