Photo by Alastair Muir.
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 black and white spy thriller The 39 Steps has been given a vividly colorful stage adaptation by a troupe of four British actors who’ve brought their madcap show to Broadway after an award-winning run on the West End. Adapted from a 1915 novel by John Buchan, the movie concerns the dashing but vague Richard Hannay, who gets ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse after shots ring out at a London music hall. In the ensuing stampede, a woman bluntly asks to go home with him and, once there, reveals that she’s a spy trying to stop a plot to smuggle British military secrets out of the country.
Hannay isn’t quite convinced until his guest wakes him up during the night with a knife in her back – from there on out he’s on the run, chased by police who think he’s the murderer and spies who want him dead for what they think he knows. His flight through the Scottish countryside is marked by one narrow escape after another as he struggles to clear his name and figure out just what his dead house guest meant by The 39 Steps. The daunting escapades provide the springboard for this highly amusing theatrical farce; part Monty Python, part slapstick vaudeville, the production is living proof that a few talented actors and a lively script can be infinitely more entertaining than any big-budget spectacle.
With half of the cast playing an innumerable number of characters – often switching in and out of costumes several times a minute – the show is as marvelous to watch for its imaginative staging as it is for its espionage storyline. Some familiarity with the film may come in handy, though; because the action hews so close to the movie, a great part of the fun comes from seeing the small cast meet the challenges of recreating the film with not enough actors and little in the way of sets. The 39 Steps is purely escapist theater at its finest, an escape achieved with brilliant theatrical ingenuity, not the usual bloated Broadway glitz.
The 39 Steps continues through March 23rd at The American Airlines Theatre [227 West 42nd St]. Ticket prices vary.
