It's been a while since the National Theatre of Brent—in the persona of Desmond Olivier Dingle, a.k.a. Patrick Barlow—brought its goofy charms to the stage. Apart from Love Upon the Throne, a spoof on the Royal Family's troubles a few years back, the NTB, whose spiritual home was the Tricycle Theatre, specialised in making a crisis out of a drama, especially in bringing such epics as The Bible, Wagner's Ring and The Charge of the Light Brigade down to its small-scale level.
Charles Edwards & Catherine McCormack
in The 39 Steps
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John Buchan's spy novel, The 39 Steps, from 1915 is not without its big moments, too—a chase across the top of a moving train, scaling the Forth Bridge—and once again Barlow's adaptation, taking its cue from Alfred Hitchock's 1935 film, makes a virtue of the staging limitations. By using less in the way of pyrotechnics and props, it actually achieves more in the imaginative sense (this achieved most memorably by Shared Experience when they did War and Peace with what seemed like a couple of chairs and a large flag).
You can see why Hitchcock was attracted to the story; it has at its centre, typically, a good man—Richard Hannay—who finds himself caught up in circumstances beyond his control and unwittingly on the wrong side of the law. In taking Buchan's story, Hitchcock's most crucial addition was humour; Barlow's version has taken that several steps further, using just four actors to play some 150 characters and making a constant joke out of it.
Maria Aitken's sprightly, enjoyable, not to say slightly camp, production is all gung-ho, chocks away and stiff upper lips, personified by Charles Edwards' wonderfully chisel-jawed, pencil-moustached hero as Hannay makes his escape having witnessed the murder of a German spy (Catherine McCormack with an accent as thick as bratwurst). "Golly!" he remarks as the knifed woman falls across his lap, before bolting to Scotland in an attempt to avert some wartime sabotage.
Catherine McCormack, Charles Edwards,
Simon Gregor & Rupert Degas in The 39 Steps
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There is plenty of neat staging and observation: the use of Hitchcock-style music adds great tension to the story and the many chase sequences. A scene on board a train is atmospherically staged with steam and flickering lights, and climaxes with an extraordinarily convincing train-top sequence with minimal fuss or effect.
Silly visual jokes feature heavily, too: one of my favourites was a signpost to a castle with huge cawing black birds on it—a nice nod to Hitchcock there. An aerial chase is even realised with lo-tech shadow puppetry.
Much praise should go, though, to Rupert Degas and Simon Gregor, who play a myriad minor roles, most of them Scottish. We haven't seen such deftness and dexterity in whizzing from part to part—a pair of twee Scottish hoteliers, Mr. Memory, a German baddie who coins such words as "bovinescheissedrivel," assorted police and officials to name but a few—by two men since Marie Jones's Stones in his Pockets. Their indefatigable efforts add to the production's homespun charm.
All very jolly, then, but perhaps this might work best as a seasonal offering for Christmas?
The 39 Steps
By John Buchan
Adapted by Patrick Barlow
Directed by Maria Aitken
Tricycle Theatre