The 39 Steps play review: This bonkers show is infectious
The 39 Steps Play review and star rating: ★★★★
Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of thriller The 39 Steps became the fifth longest-running show in the West End during its last run. It’s easy to understand why: it has a gorgeously imaginative, handmade feel to it that is rare to experience on a major West End stage, and way more meat on its bones than The Show That Goes Wrong, the other big farce on right now.
In programme material, Barlow says his 2005 adaptation is a thriller, much like the original 1915 John Buchan novel of the same name and subsequent Alfred Hitchcock film. That isn’t true; this show is a piss take from the get-go, but that’s not a criticism, just a clarification. Let’s not pretend anyone’s on the edge of their seats.
Four actors play over one hundred characters (yep) in this Whodunnit where we’ll all trying to discover who knifed a spy called Annabelle Smith to death at the top of the play. Tom Byrne leads the cast as Richard Hannay, a suave Londoner who goes on the run to Scotland after being accused of committing the murder. Barlow introduces a raft of larger-than-life characters as Hannay evades the police and the murderers.
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But it’s really about the staging, particularly Peter McKintosh’s engrossing, everchanging set, like one of those snow globes children stare into. The 39 Steps incorporates imaginative puppetry, clever lighting design and mime to delve into the murky underworld of Hannay’s escape. It’s incredible how much can be achieved with so few props and it’s a brilliant move to bring on the three backstage production hands at the curtain call; they help engineer car chases, falls from bridges, God knows what out of silhouette and shadow. Maria Aitken’s direction has created a Fawlty Towers-type Whodunnit where each new scene progresses out something, or someone, utterly unrelated to what we’d seen before.
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Byrne is a tremendous physical actor, wobbling his shoulders with dread and pulling the sorts of funny faces posh people pull when their wine is corked as likably posh Hannay, his pursued protagonist wobbling his way ridiculously out of trouble, like a Mr Bean who went to Eton and got framed as a killer.
It all feels delightfully handmade and fringey. The 39 Steps is an homage to the roots of theatre: these skits could have been performed 100 years ago. That they still work today is testament to the power of clowning and physical theatre, without massive technological bells and whistles, to amuse and delight.
The 39 Steps plays until 28 September at the Trafalgar Theatre