Review: The Thirty-Nine Steps

The cast of The Thirty-Nine Steps

Hitchcock’s classic 1935 spy thriller, the Thirty-Nine Steps, co-written by his wife Alma Reville, is the original man-on-the-run, multi-location film, full of clever set-pieces and witty, sometimes risque dialogue. It’s heartening then to see so much of the original script retained in this affectionate pastiche of the genre.

Much of the fun stems from the way the film’s cast of 32 has been whittled down to four in the stage version, involving surreal doubling, trebling and quadrupling of characters, even within one scene, perfecting hat-swapping to a new art.

Greg Williams plays the stoic, resourceful hero, Richard Hannay, who is helped and hindered by Elena Bracken in three roles, whilst Paul Dawson and Andrew Fidler positively people the stage as, well, everyone else. It makes for frantic, sometimes pantomimic action, as Hannay is chased from music hall to the Scottish highlands by way of the Forth Bridge and back. A lot of the film’s locations were recreated in the studio and here too there’s a purposely home-made quality to the “special effects” which add immeasureably to the good-natured daftness. There’s a Pythonesque excess to these, plus the quick changes and accents, which amounts to a lovely parody of theatre itself.

Williams, a paragon of pipe, tweeds and whisky’n’soda, maintains his “good egg” persona throughout the silliness, puzzled and harrassed but rarely fazed by the series of tight-spots in which he finds himself; his fine performance provides the holding centre of the piece and anchors it firmly to 30s decency and fair play.

Bracken well differentiates the characters of her cool mittel-European woman of mystery, the timidly yearning Scots lass and the sulky, passionate girl who ends up shackled to Hannay.

Dawson and Fidler knock themselves out, popping up in so many various guises, it becomes dizzying; Dawson’s crumbling Scots pensioner and eager, pint-sized newsboy are real comic genius and Fidler’s appearance as trivia-king Mr. Memory is one of his many dazzling incarnations throughout the show.

What better way of casting off the pandemic blues than by booking a seat for this loopy, pell-mell production which mixes John Buchan parody with something close to classic Goonery? Take those 39 steps down to considerable theatrical joy at the Curtain Theatre.

Peter Fitton

The Thirty-Nine Steps continues at The Curtain Theatre until Saturday 2 April.
Visit the Curtain Theatre web site for tickets.

• www.curtaintheatrerochdale.co.uk