The 39 Steps is a bodacious Alfred Hitchcock mix of comedy and romance driven by foreign espionage, currently playing at off-Broadway’s Union Square Theater. With shrewd use of scanty scenery, a few well-chosen props and creative tweaks, four actors flawlessly switch between countless characters. Playwright Patrick Barlow and director Maria Aitken keep this screwball conceit racing at a sleek pace with wink-wink seriousness.
Originally based on John Buchan's 1915 book, the current 39 Steps is closer to the 1935 Hitchcock film, and the familiar man-on -the-run concept is taken to a new level. Main character, Richard Hannay (Robert Petkoff), is lazing about in his London flat when it suddenly comes to him: "Find something to do, you bloody fool!... Something utterly pointless...I know! I’ll go to the theater!" And it's off, full-speed ahead in a headstrong rush of exciting adventures.
That night, at a vaudeville theater, Hannay spots a mysterious woman, Annabella Schmidt (Brittany Vicars) dressed in black. Suddenly shots ring out, and the enigmatic Annabella approaches him, claiming her life is in peril. She asks to stay at Hannay's house, telling him she is being pursued by "the 39 steps," an organization of foreign spies collecting confidential military information. (To clarify, "the 39 steps", alludes to Hitchcock's use of the MacGuffin, a gimmick, here a spy ring, that drives the story.) Annabella is on her way to Scotland to stop the spies from taking the information to an enemy country. Before Hannay can find out more, Annabella ends up with a knife in her back, whispering, "Alt na Shellach!" Hannay is now entangled in an international crisis.
Panicked, Hannay knows he has been spotted and goes on the run, clutching Annabella's map of Scotland. He needs to clear his name and save his country and possible the world. Dashing for the train, he winds up on top of the Flying Scotsman, chased by police. He runs into corrupt criminals, lands in the moors, hangs from an Edinburgh bridge, stops for a hairy stay in a farm house and finds a castle called, Alt na Shellach. He also meets the obligatory Hitchcock blonde.
As sequences use imaginative puppetry, mime, and shadows for non-stop animation, look for hints of Hitchcock's future films, “Psycho,” “Strangers on a Train,” and particularly, “North by Northwest.”
Petkoff plays only one part, the poised tweedy Brit, Hannay. Brittainy Vicars clearly defines three different women, Annabella is glamorous and mysterious, Margaret dowdy, and the vulnerable yet clever Hitchcock blonde named Pamela. Arnie Burton and Billy Carter brilliantly take on various roles, switching parts as swiftly as hats, from cops to traveling salesmen, glum Scotsmen, even two characters at one time. Peter MacIntish designs set and costumes with a steady eye on the 1930's, creatively popping in props as needed. Lighting by Kevin Adams and Mic Pool’s sound design add to the relentless sequences kept animated and amusing by director Maria Aitken and by the character choreography by Toby Sedgwick and Christopher Bayes. Only the intermission interrupts the goofy momentum of this send-up of an early Alfred Hitchcock thriller.
