Photo Marc Chalifoux, costumes Brian Bast, set Chantel Fortin, lighting Rory Turner
The first play in the new Teatro Live! season, Farren Timoteo’s first as artistic director, is the hilarious, fast-moving, and farfetched The 39 Steps.
The 39 Steps was first a 1915 adventure novel / melodramatic thriller by John Buchan, who later served as the 15th Governor-General of Canada. I read the novel as a teenager, along with Buchan’s other works Greenmantle and Prester John, because my father had kept his childhood copies. It was adapted into a spy-thriller movie by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935, and had a few later film adaptations as well. In 2005, Patrick Barlow wrote this stage-play based on the earlier versions, but dialing everything up to the point of parody for 21st-century audiences.
The curtains open on emo-self-absorbed Richard Hannay, slouching in an armchair in his half-unpacked London flat, explaining that all his friends have moved away or died and he is bored. In this production Hannay is played by Geoffrey Simon Brown, who brings an amusing mix of bravado and bewilderment to the role.
Fortunately for the audience, his state of ennui doesn’t last long! A trip to the (vaudeville) theatre brings him an encounter with a mysterious woman (Priya Narine), who demands sanctuary in his apartment but ends up being murdered after entrusting him with vague secrets and missions.
Many many minor characters in the story of Hannay’s flight across England and Scotland are portrayed by two ensemble members (billed as Clown 1 and Clown 2), Michael Watt and Katie Yoner. Watt and Yoner are both noted physical-comedy performers in their own work as well as BFA-educated actors, and they were perfect for these roles, in which the quick-changes are acknowledged and sometimes flawed. Edmonton audiences rarely applaud transitions, but there was one shift that had Yoner’s character grabbing the four chairs and a table that had been representing a vehicle, and striking all of them in one trip, ending with crashing and banging in the wings.
Narine also portrays some other characters encountered by Hannay – an indignant rail passenger who reports him to the police, a lonely young Scottish crofter – sending up various tropes of women in early-20th-century thrillers.
I recalled a previous production of 39 Steps that I saw in the intimate space of Walterdale Theatre in 2022, where I kept swivelling my head back and forth to follow the fast-paced action of a train across the Forth Rail Bridge, a manhunt by air, a flight across misty sheep-pasture, and a final showdown back in a London theatre. I wondered how Timoteo’s direction in the larger traditional proscenium-stage auditorium would evoke the urgency and immersive nature of the script. And I was pleasantly surprised! Some of the action had me gasping and laughing because even with my vague memories of the story I hadn’t predicted what was going to happen next and how.
Design choices for this production all supported the action which was central to the play. Many set pieces (Chantel Fortin) were used in different creative ways. Lighting (Rory Turner), fog, sound, and Brian Bast’s costuming added atmosphere and affirmed the familiar tropes.
I found some of the dialogue hard to hear or understand, particularly when they were speaking quickly in unfamiliar accents over background sounds of trains or gunshots. But it wasn’t hard to follow. The plot was both farfetched and satisfying, and it was a great night out.
The 39 Steps is playing at the Varscona Theatre until November 30th, with tickets available here and at the door.
Next on my theatregoing calendar are two shows next weekend:
Guys and Dolls, the Loesser/Swerling/Burrows 1950 musical, a Foote in the Door production at La Cité Francophone / Théâtre Servus Credit Union, running Nov 21-Nov 30. Tickets here!
PepperMUNT, the bi-munt-ly late cabaret, will be on Saturday November 22nd, this time in the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market. Tickets here!
Ephemeral Pleasures 