Patrick Barlow’s play “The 39 Steps,” now running at the Guild Festival in Scarborough, is everything you’d expect from a stage adaptation of a classic Alfred Hitchcock spy thriller. And it’s nothing you’d expect, as well.
On one hand, Barlow’s script follows the 1935 film (itself loosely translated from a novel by John Buchan) to a tee. Mistaken identities? Check. Police chases? Absolutely. Juicy film noir murders? You betcha.
But while the show does retain all the plot points from the movie, it feels thoroughly anti-Hitchcockian, disposing of the filmmaker’s classic techniques faster than its protagonist, Richard Hannay (Sébastien Heins), can outrun the fuzz after he’s unwittingly framed for murder and caught in the crosshairs of a foreign spy group trying to steal British state secrets.
Instead, this version of “The 39 Steps” is more in the vein of a Monty Python sketch comedy — a parody that lampoons Hitchcock with surrealist humour, minimalistic effects and frenetic physical gags.
Whereas Hitchcock films are often completely serious affairs, a medium through which audiences might project their own insecurities, Barlow’s play explores the sheer silliness of some of his premises and how deeply unfounded those anxieties can be. A secret agent (Georgia Findlay) stabbed in the middle of the night in Hannay’s apartment? A police chase that takes place on a moving train and ends with Hannay dangling off a bridge? Pfft, Barlow seems to say throughout his adaptation, which treats all these improbable narrative twists as fodder for comedy.
It’s wise that Barlow has gone this route instead of trying to merely imitate Hitchcock’s style. After all, you can’t beat the master of suspense at his own game.
Rather, Barlow’s irreverent reimagining leans into the medium of theatre. And much of the fun of this show is watching the story told by just four actors. (Heins and Findlay are joined by Isaiah Kolundzic and Kiana Woo, who play some 250 characters collectively.)
In Tyler J. Seguin’s dynamic production, they dip in and out of their parts with a quick hat swap or a change of coats. (In one astonishing and breathless sequence, Woo plays three characters in a single scene.)
The staging is marked by an air of whimsy and imagination. The set, mostly comprised of stage blocks, transforms into everything from a train carriage to a West End theatre. A ladder is turned into a bed, then into the wings of a propeller plane and an apartment window.
At times, Barlow’s brand of comedy threatens to veer into tedium. Some of the gags overstay their welcome. The whole show, clocking in at roughly an hour and 50 minutes (nearly a half-hour longer than the film), could easily be trimmed to a tidy 90 minutes. But Seguin’s taut production, led by a cast in complete control of the comedy, somehow manages to wrangle the unwieldy parts.
One of the best aspects of this “39 Steps” experience, however, is not even the play itself. The Guild Festival is offering free shuttles between the Guild Park and Gardens and Kennedy TTC and Guildwood GO stations throughout this production’s two-week run. The service is more than merely a transit service; it’s also one helluva fun, pop-up theatre experience. (Actor Chris Leveille led my fellow shuttle riders through a series of deduction games that primed them for the show to come.)
With the dearth of theatre offerings in Toronto this time of year, the Guild Festival’s production of “The 39 Steps” is certainly well worth a trip east.
