Jo Stone-Fewings

Jo Stone-Fewings

Jo Stone-Fewings is the fourth actor to play the leading part of Richard Hannay in the ongoing hit West End production of The 39 Steps, the affectionate theatrical pastiche of both the Alfred Hitchcock movie from the 1930s and the John Buchan novel that inspired the film. While this role’s originator, Charles Edwards, transferred with the play to Broadway, where both Patrick Barlow’s script and Maria Aitken’s direction are Tony nominees this season, the London production continues merrily on at the Criterion Theatre. Stone-Fewings, who is contracted to play Richard Hannay through October, is a veteran of London’s not-for-profit circuit. (Before this, he played Sparkish in Jonathan Kent’s revival of The Country Wife and was Joe Pitt, the closeted Mormon, in the Daniel Kramer revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels In America.) The father of a newborn baby girl (his wife is the actress Nancy Carroll, a National Theatre near-regular), an exceedingly amiable Stone-Fewings took time from a hot May afternoon “lolling about the garden” at his Herne Hill, south London, home to talk to broadway.com about fatherhood, theatrical takeovers, and the fine line between a square jaw and bags under the eyes.

How nice it must feel to be on the West End and in a leading role, after all the time you’ve put in at the National Theatre and elsewhere over the years.
It’s been an extraordinary whirlwind experience. I’d never done a takeover before, and I didn’t have a lot of time—about two and a half weeks. This has taught me about just getting on with it and not overanalyzing and over-preparing [the work]. And this is an incredibly complex piece, so to sort of take over with this speed is quite exhilarating. [Co-star] Josefina Gabrielle said to me, “It’s like getting on four separate water shoots, and we all come flying down.” What surprises me, only a few weeks into doing it, is that I look around at all the other characters at the end and think, “There are just four of us!” The speed of it is such that you don’t have time really to think about all that.

Josefina Gabrielle and Jo Stone-Fewings in The 39 Steps

Did you talk to any of your predecessors in the part?
It’s strange, really, because we know Charlie Edwards [who originated the role]; he came to Nancy’s and my wedding, and I’ve been getting texts from him from New York, which is lovely. And we know Bertie Portal [London’s second Hannay]. When I got the role, I watched it a couple of times from out front and also from backstage, which was actually really interesting. [Immediate predecessor] Simon Paisley Day gave me some pointers that hopefully I will pass on to the next person about the importance of backstage water stops. He kept telling me, “What you really need to know is when you can grab a sip of water and when you can wipe your brow.” There is a sort of Hannay club. I think we all have to get together and have a big dinner together with the Korean Hannay. [Laughs.]

You must work up quite a sweat.
Particularly because the whole thing’s in tweed. [Laughs] That was the other thing Simon said to me, which is, “Don’t stop eating; you’ve just got to keep eating.”

The production trades on notions of Englishness but actually Hannay isn’t English, is he?
In the book, he’s a mining engineer from South Africa whereas in the film he’s a rancher from Canada. We do use that line, “How far is Winnipeg from Montreal,” but that’s about as far as it goes.He’s a sort of Everyman, really. What’s very important with this show, of course, is that it’s an amalgam of the book and the film, so I read the book and thought, Right, OK, that doesn’t really answer for me what the play is about, so I then saw the film and got a much better idea. I’ve watched the film countless times now and have completely fallen in love with Robert Donat; I just adore him. I think what I’m doing is closer to what Robert Donat is doing: the book is concerned almost more with the countryside and with being chased by an unknown force. The film is more of its time and very sexy and has women in it, as well; that’s the other thing about it—all the intrigue with the Nazis and the spies.

The fun must be in finding, and maintaining, the right level of tongue-in-cheek sobriety—that quality that the British refer to as po-faced.
I like to play it as straight as possible because for me it’s midway between an homage and a parody of the styles. If it were just a parody, the audience’s attention would last about half an hour; they want something a bit more meaty behind it. But at the end of the day, it’s also a thriller and so innately theatrical that I don’t think you need to do anything more to it than just take an audience into that world and that style. There are certain things within the play that poke fun at itself, but I think that by parodying it, you’re holding it at arm’s length and commenting on it.

Jo Stone-Fewings in The 39 Steps

How are you taking to the square jaw and clipped diction required for the role?
The diction I’m loving; I’m loving the speed of it. That was terribly important to me—to get the rhythm of the language. As for the square jaw, I’ve probably got that down less so [laughs]. It’s more the bags under my eyes. We’ve just had our first baby, Nellie, who’s six weeks old. Nellie is an old name from Nancy’s family. The baby’s full name is Nellie Boudicaa Lightfoot Stone-Fewings.

Wow, that’s impressive! I saw you and Nancy together on the West End a few summers ago in that delicious revival of See How They Run, directed by Douglas Hodge. But how did you two actually meet?
We met doing a weird sort of documentary film, In Search of Shakespeare, where Michael Wood had gone to the Royal Shakespeare Company and said, “I want to put a little company together…”