HotReview.org Editor's
Picks
Shows Worth Seeing:
Alfred Hitchcock's The
39 Steps
Adapted by Patrick Barlow
Cort Theatre
138 W. 48th St.
Box office: (212) 239-6200
When I rented Hitchcock’s
film The Thirty-Nine Steps in anticipation of seeing
this terrifically absurd theatrical adaptation by the British
comedian Patrick Barlow, I realized that I’d forgotten how
early the film is. It was made in 1935, and though it displays
all the wonderfully distinctive markers of Hitchcock’s later,
more technically sophisticated masterpieces, it is itself comparatively
maladroit and clunky—with many scenes looking like they
were staged in a tiny, poorly equipped garage. This makes it,
of course, ripe for a theatrical sendup, and Barlow and the director
Maria Aitken have exploited every imaginable angle. The story
is the basic spy-chase suspense thriller that Hitchcock made his
trademark, in which an innocent and rather ordinary man is framed
by circumstantial evidence and then hounded by good and bad pursuers
until one or more unlikely twists rescues him. In this stage version,
four actors (three men and a woman) play more than 150 roles,
switching identities and circumstances with dizzying speed and
madcap exuberance. The pleasure is not just in watching their
ridiculous, self-multiplying antics but also in their perceptiveness
in recognizing the stagey, melodramatic pith of the original scenes.
The ultimate ridiculousness, of course, is that such a humble
show is playing on Broadway, but don’t let that keep you
away.
