THE great Spanish playwright Calderon once described drama as “a plank and a passion.”
I don’t know how much passion there is in the Roundabout Theatre’s delightful version of “The 39 Steps” – after Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 movie of the same name, based on John Buchan’s 1915 spy thriller – but the plank is truly in place in this inventively astonishing, stripped-down comedy, adapted by Patrick Barlow and staged, as in London’s West End, by Maria Aitken.
The play has at least 60 or so characters, here condensed to a cast of four: the hero, Richard Hannay, played by Charles Edwards; three women (Jennifer Ferrin) and the rest played, in dizzyingly rapid succession, by Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders.
The sets and costumes by Peter McKintosh bring a fresh dimension to the word “basic.” A few tables, a telephone, four or five chairs, four highly important trunks, door frames to go through, window frames to slide through, a pair of handcuffs, guns, and smoke, lots and lots of stage smoke, most of it pretending to be Scots mist.
The resultant play is a marvelous spoof of the movie, translating Hitchcock’s thrills, spills and visuals into elementary stage effects – even the famous train chase over the top of The Flying Scotsman express, and the dangling hero’s scene on Edinburgh’s Forth Bridge.
The play’s creators have affectionately pushed Hitchcock’s brilliance – watch for various homages to such movies as “The Birds” and “The Lady Vanishes” – into some riotous realm of satire, without losing its essentially Hitchcockian flavor.
Aitken, though ultimately in charge of all the fun and games, is much indebted to her actors – Edwards, Ferrin and her two protean clowns, Burton and Saunders.
Richard Hannay was the original square-jawed, tight-lipped English hero, who came from the British Empire and culminated in Bond – James Bond – and Bond’s later spy inversion, Sir Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer.
Today we see Bond as an action hero with an accent, while poor old Hannay is somewhat of a joke. And it’s a joke handsomely played by Edwards, the one refugee from the London production, with just the right pipe-clenching sense of incredulity, while Ferrin makes a smoothly bewildered heroine.
But, as it must be, the real jokes are with the clowns, sent in with virtuoso versatility by Burton and Saunders.
And what of those damned 39 steps? Hitchcock, as was his custom in searching for a plot entry, would have probably called them the story’s “McGuffin.” So let’s leave them at that.
THE 39 STEPS
American Airlines Theatre, 237 W. 42nd St.; (212) 719-1300.