The 39 Steps
Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, adapted by Patrick Barlow; Playhouse theatre at the Sydney Opera House, July 31-17-August 2008; phone: (02) 9250 7777 or www.sydneyoperahouse.com. Cast:Helena Christinson, Russell Fletcher, Mark Pegler, Jo Turner. Creatives: director Maria Aitken, set & costume design Pater McIntosh, lighting design Jon Buswell, sound design Mic Pool, movement director Toby Sedgwick, voice & dialogue coach Charmian Gradwell, costume coordinator & dresser Kate Shanahan, wig mistress & dresser Linda Cowell.
WHEN Patrick Barlow dreamed up the National Theatre of Brent in the late 70s, he may not have realised he was also devising a new sub-genre of theatre that would keep him busy for decades to come. On the other hand, anyone who could name a one-man band “the National Theatre” of anywhere, let alone Brent, probably wouldn’t be surprised by anything. The Australian equivalent of Brent, by the way, would be somewhere like Gladesville or Kyeemagh.
Barlow – helped out by a succession of A.N. Others (“the company”) including, early on, the marvellous Jim Broadbent – devised grand theatrical entertainments in which all parts, ranging for instance, from the complete works of Shakespeare to the 500 hapless cavalrymen of the Charge of the Light Brigade, were played by the duo. The results were mind-boggling and riotously funny. The bonus was what became apparent in the simple, zany telling: structures and stories uncovered, plots and turns dissected and laid bare. Thus the shows were often revelatory too.
Barlow has gone on to do many other things but is still the master of the minimal maximum effect. And also master of the seriously ridiculous. So The 39 Steps is the perfect vehicle for his imagination and skills. Alfred Hitchcock loosely based his 1935 noir-ish thriller on John Buchan’s original novel in which Richard Hannay, a decent sort of chap, is suffering terminal ennui until a glamorous blonde is murdered in his West End flat. Naturally, he is Scotland Yard’s prime suspect.
Before expiring, the blonde gives Hannay reason to flee north to Edinburgh aboard the Flying Scotsman. Plods and mysterious spy-type persons unknown hotly pursue him. He meets another glamorous blonde on the train who is not murdered.All the while his quest for the mysterious “39 steps” keeps him half a step ahead of the pack while immaculately barbered, dressed in a three-piece Harris tweed suit and well-polished brogues.
The denouement is thrilling, or at least, it was in 1935. By the time Hannay saves the Empire from Nazi domination in Barlow’s version of Hitchcock’s version of Buchan, most theatregoers will probably be too weak with laughter to care one way or the other.
Barlow’s usual complement of two actors is bumped up to four to take on the 100+ roles in the piece. Mark Pegler is as debonair and heroic as Michael Wilding in the role of Richard Hannay, Helena Christinson vamps her eyebrows off as the various blondes, living and deceased; while Russell Fletcher and Jo Turner make a brilliant fist of the spies, cops, crofters, publicans, railway guards and other members of the great British public along the way.
Directed by Maria Aitken whose command of farce extends to both sides of the footlights, The 39 Steps is as fine an example of theatre’s most difficult form as you’re likely to see any time soon. She has immeasurable assistance from a slick backstage crew that works invisbly with the cast to ensure the production purrs as smoothly as a Rolls Royce engine.
It’s utterly ridiculous, brilliantly conceived and equally brilliantly realised by the English crew and Australian cast. Aside from sheer entertainment value, The 39 Steps is also a deceptively effortless master class in farce, stagecraft, design wit and flair and some of the most authentic fraffly accents this side of Noel Coward.
Eckshly, one must say it makes one veddeh veddeh heppeh to report thet one might split one’s trizers and perheps even fall dine laughing, so awfully funny and frightfully well done is this ripping entertainment.
