The gripping fast-paced comedy thriller, The 39 Steps, is set to tour Australia from this month. Mixing Alfred Hitchcock’s classic spy thriller with a dash of Monty Python-style chaos, the play is sure to excite the laughing gear.
Directed by acclaimed theatre-maker Damien Ryan and starring four of Australia’s most beloved talents – Lisa McCune (Blue Heelers, Sea Patrol, The King and I), Ian Stenlake (Sea Patrol, Stingers) and The Umbilical Brothers (David Collins and Shane Dundas)
For director Ryan the opportunity to work with Lisa McCune was an enormous privilege he simply could not pass up and then to bring on board Ian Stenlake, David Collins and Shane Dundas, all of whom, Ryan says, he’s been huge fan of for decades, was an equal thrill.
“So it’s the people, the production and creative team, and the producers that drew me to the work, along with falling in love with the joy of the play,” he says. “It’s a spoof of a genre that somehow lives in our DNA, the murder mystery, psychological, noir, spy drama and adventure piece that celebrates actors and their cleverness as storytellers — and I like that it sticks its finger in the eye of cinema a bit, showing what theatre can create through suggestion and imagination.”
A fantastic challenge for four actors, portraying approximately 130 characters between them in 100 minutes – a wild ride for both audience and creatives!
“Playfulness, a true sense of play, invention, versatility and a ability to tell the truth while making us laugh,” says Ryan when asked what he was looking for in a cast. “This is a delightful group of human beings with immense capacity as artists, they dazzle me every day with their craft.”
The frantic, fast paced comedy does not come without its challenges, though, and for Ryan it is costume changes.
“Hundreds of them. In the dark. At speed. And the sheer technical demands of the script. The basic article of faith in this script is — 4 actors can’t possibly put a classic Hitchcock film with hundreds of characters and dozens of atmospheric locations on stage, but actually they can. With your help. Come watch us try.”
Ryan says that what he loved the most about his relationship with actors in the rehearsal is that as a director he is really just the first audience member, and, he says, that’s the privilege of the position, and kind of the job to be honest. To advocate for the playwright and the audience experience.
“Is the story compelling, is it clear, is it surprising, is its rhythm working? And of course, support the artists who are really telling the story — plays are for actors and designers to express themselves and we are there to facilitate that joyous, stressful, revelatory process. I love watching actors work, I love the way they discover, solve, argue, reveal themselves.”
THE 39 STEPS is adapted by Patrick Barlow from the novel by John Buchan from the movie by Alfred Hitchcock. Barlow’s adaptation has been with us for about 20 years and has been successfully touring for possibly as long but what, for Ryan, is the secret of Barlow’s success. What keeps audiences wanting to return again and again?
For Ryan it celebrates what theatre is. “The 39 Steps is a bit of a rare alchemical trick — it’s prose, playwriting and celluloid – and the three competing forms get along like a house on fire. It’s travelled through all the major mediums of the past century: John Buchan’s brilliant 1915 novel, made iconic in the lens of Alfred Hitchcock in 1935, then lovingly reimagined for the theatre, first by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon in 1996 who, over a pint or twelve, realised all it needed was 4 actors and masochistic stage manager, then by Patrick Barlow who adapted the work further into this script in 2005. It’s a classic tale of espionage and mistaken identity, but it’s really a tribute to the forms themselves, and to our love of stories. The stage version winks at the cinematic grammar of Hitchcock’s style, while revelling in the live magic only theatre can conjure: the clowning, the quick-changes, the metatheatrical mischief. It’s not just an adaptation, it’s really a reunion. A celebration of how these forms, usually rivals, can work in concert to remind us why we gather in the dark to be told stories at all. And part of the reason they all get on so well is that both Buchan and Hitchcock remind the audience unstintingly that the character, (the actor, the human being), is central and of utmost importance — Buchan’s novel is told in the first-person and his voice is immediate and darkly poetic, we are literally inside his head. Hitchcock, likewise, is all about the human predicament, his genius is forcing an ‘everyman’ into extremis and dragging us along with him or her. And the play is simply a joyous celebration of everything the actor can do and the rough magic of theatre – indeed, it pays that tribute even in its first plot device, when Richard Hannay’s innocent visit to the theatre sparks an adventure, an immersive adventure. We, like him, get ‘involved'”.
Ryan has been in the business for over 20 years now, both as director and performer at Sydney Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare Co, and his own company, Sport for Jove. He doesn’t think he has a favourite genre or type of story, other than loving language and ensemble and works of ambition. “I just love the creativity and the challenges of imagination that theatre asks of us. And working with actors and designers is a great joy.”
Join the suave but unsuspecting Richard Hannay as he finds himself framed for murder and tangled in a web of spies, secrets and seductive strangers. To clear his name, he must outrun the law, outwit international agents and survive a string of increasingly absurd adventures.
THE 39 STEPS will open at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House from 8 August, then travel to Newcastle’s Civic Theatre from 2 September, Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre from 10 September, and the Playhouse, QPAC in Brisbane from 7 October. Tickets for all cities are on sale now
Says Ryan, “It’s suspenseful. It’s serious. And it’s seriously silly. And Lisa McCune, Ian Stenlake, Shane Dundas and David Collins are on stage! Together! It’s ridiculous fun.”
