Review: The 39 Steps at The Lowry

Jun 4 2008 Chester Chronicle

THE 39 STEPS/The Lowry, Salford Quays, until June 7

REVIEW/by Peggy Woodcock

WE WERE all in on the fun - that was the key to the success of The 39 Steps at The Lowry.

On stage were four actors valiantly telling the legendary John Buchan tale of espionage and adventure in London and the Scottish Highlands. One of them, at one point, was rotating three hats and three accents to give us three characters - and at top speed!

Watching was an audience loving it, every last caper, even and especially the ones that went ever so slightly wrong. On purpose? Who knows, but they and the rest got the laughs and well deserved because the effort, the acting, the commitment, the detail, the timing, was superb.

What would Buchan made of all this, I couldn’t help thinking, the politician, diplomat and soldier who wrote this thriller, and created his hero Richard Hannay, in all seriousness. For here was an hilarious send-up of story and the period it was set in.

But done so affectionately. The 39 Steps has progressed through three films, only the most recent paying proper attention to the book. Hannay has even made it on to TV. The novel and its spin-offs are embedded in our culture, from schooldays on, due tribute to Buchan.

Now director Maria Aitken has picked up on the first and perhaps most famous film version, by Alfred Hitchcock, in 1935, and followed it scene by scene. But with a vastly different style. She has given it a cartoon treatment, whizzing the cast Tom and Jerry style from location to location and improvising madly.

Need a stream to cross? There’s a black plastic wrapped body lying on stage. Air search over the moors? It may not sound it, but shadow play with planes on sticks is very funny!

David Michaels had the luxury of one part playing Richard Hannay, and he took him suavely through the play, from the opening brush with the mysterious woman spy in his London flat, through strenuous Highland adventures, to the final, well manipulated, theatrical drama.

Clare Swinburne ranged cleverly through three female characters while Alan Perrin and Colin Mace, listed appropriately in the programme as Man 1 and Man 2, brilliantly supplied the other characters.