Really Jolly Decent
The Thirty Nine Steps. The Delightfully Refurbished Criterion Theatre, London. 20 August 2012.
Just watch the video
trailer on their site and you will realize why I have wanted to see this play
for the last two years. Thanks to the cultural Olympiad, tickets were available at a splendid savings rate , thus two of my dear friends and myself got togged up in our vintage finery, chin-chinned with some pimms and pootled along to the Criterion.
Being a fan of the classic
Hitchcock spy romp this production is based upon (Robert Donat on top form) I was
pleased to see the elements of suspense were still there, but largely played
down in favour of the mouthful of marbles British comedy. Vintage tweeds, pipes,
Cockerney accents and a dashing hero
with an attractive pencil thin moustache meant all the elements for a jolly fun
night were there.
With only four actors
playing all the parts, there was a good dash of anarchic, amusing stage
business –swapping between roles with some deft hat changes , dashing between
doors and moving door frames to convey a sense of time and space. An entertaining
shadow-play, showing Hannay escaping across the Scottish moorland chased by
policemen, a bi-plane and the Loch Ness Monster, added to the perfect tone of
gentle silly humour.
Our hero was played as
both suitably charming and wry, with a shade of no ‘begod nonsense’ earnestness
about him; the right mix for our adventuresome protagonist. We cheered him with
gusto, hallooing huzzars and bravos after his emphatic speech extolling all
round decency and goodness and giving a poor bloke a fighting chance speech.
So maybe this was not
Chekhov, Ibsen or Shakespeare; but it was terrific fun and true to the stiff
upper lip spirit of the Hitchcock film.
John Buchan may well have been spinning in his grave – but if he were it would only
show him up as a terribly bad sport; Bad show old chap ,as this was ,undoubtedly,
a terribly good show.
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