THE 39 STEPS
Fiction to film, film to stage, it’s a fashionable trend and has been for some time now. It can work beautifully and it can equally fail and when it fails it can be catastrophic. Over the years I have witnessed both, a beautifully staged Brief Encounter and a confused Wuthering Heights, and most recently a Hitchcock that left me far north of north by north west.
In fact cue Fanfare, a Brighton company, tackled Brief Encounter at BOAT last summer and pulled it off with style. So my expectations for their John Bucchan were high. I actually love The 39 Steps, the book and some of the film manifestations, although for me the one that stands proud of the rest, and there are many, is the 1935 production directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Robert Donat. So I was delighted to see that this production was very much grounded in that version.
But when I say grounded I should say stylistically grounded. This is very much a comedy based on the spy thriller and one that had me chortling throughout. Actually it had me roaring with laughter at times.
Director Patric Kearns has taken the brilliant Patrick Barlow script and done it more than justice, he has added to it twists and devices that add a new level of comedy to the whole. With a stage littered with props and furniture, racks of costumes, a library of hats and three very visible and slightly alarming black-clad stage hands the story unfolds. You may well know it and if you don’t I’m not going to spoil it here.
The rest of course is down the cast, and an enormous cast it needs to be to capture the many characters that Richard Hannay meets along the way, from milk men, travelling lingerie salesmen, porters, policemen, hoteliers, crofters, townsfolk, spies, sirens and wicked… oh enough listing, let’s just say a lot of parts.
So rather brilliantly all this is pulled off by a cast of just four, yes four. Jamie Kenna, you know him from Peaky Blinders and Coronation Street as well as a CV peppered with roles, plays Hannay, the louche middle aged hero who becomes unwittingly embroiled in a German plot to steal secret information. It’s a masterclass in the portrayal of upper middle class masculinity, all clipped tones and affected mannerisms and added to that some hilariously funny physical theatre.
The central female roles are equally well expressed by Claire Marlowe, vampish German, sultry and over sexed, to coquettish Margaret and snippy Pamela and again excellent comedic timing and physicality.
The rest of the characters are covered by two clowns, or so they are billed, but the word clown simply touches on what they bring to the whole. Jessica Warbeck’s gender defying portrayals are a delight and her delivery of a complex piece of multiple-character scripting is flawless, well almost, their are moments where laughter takes over, not spoiling the whole but actually adding to it. It’s a very fine performance.
Clown two is Harry Hart. Where to start with Hart? This is quite the funniest piece of acting I have seen in many many years, Hart’s presence on that stage as he flips from “cocker-nee” to “brummy” to “glasgee” and all points north, south, east and west is simply hilarious, quick changes of costumes and gender add to the act, I will go no further lest I spoil what is to come, if you manage to get a ticket, and I really think you must!
Brighton Open Air Theatre is the ideal venue for a show like this, a loving tribute to the book and the film that finds the comedy in the period charm without disrespecting the whole and look out for the extra elements of comedy, added by this production, that I will leave for you to discover. GO SEE THIS!
Andrew Kay
9 July
Brighton Open Air Theatre
Rating:
