South Pasadena Theatre Workshop treats audiences to 75 minutes of virtually nonstop laughter in their somewhat abridged take on Patrick Barlow’s masterful four-actor stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version of John Buchan’s spy classic The 39 Steps.

 Andrew Tippie takes over for Hitchcock leading man Robert Donat as debonair hero-on-the-run Richard Hannay, fleeing enemy spies from London to Edinburgh to the Scottish moors and back … and crossing paths with a hundred-fifty or so characters along the way.

 Unlike the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation of the Buchan classic, however, it takes adapter Barlow just three featured players to bring all these supporting roles to life while recreating iconic action sequences at the teensiest fraction of a Hollywood budget.

Destini Huston shares the stage with Tippie as the mysterious, German-accented Annabella Schmidt, whose murder sends Richard on a cross-country trek; as the prim-and-proper Pamela, the stranger on a train Hannay ends up handcuffed to as enemy spies pursue them across Scotland; and as Margaret, the frisky young wife of a country farmer at least twice her age.

Meanwhile Jeremy Schaye’s Clown 1 and Sam Cass’s Clown 2 pop in and out as everybody else, from vaudeville performer Mr. Memory to a helpful milkman to a Cockney charlady to a pair of lingerie salesmen to a police officer duo to a train porter to a paperboy to a Scottish farmer to a pair of pilots to a seemingly respectable but secretly villainous professor and his buxom wife.

 Minus a cast of hundreds and what would certainly now be a multimillion-dollar budget, playwright Barlow and director Sydney Walsh recreate classic action sequences with only tables and chairs and boxes and ladders and oodles of imagination as Richard finds himself stymied again and again on a journey from his London flat to an East End music hall to an Edinburgh train to the Scottish moors to a sheriff’s office to an assembly hall to a country inn and finally to the London Palladium.

Hitchcock fans will relish the production’s many witty references to Rear Window, North By Northwest, and other Master-of-Suspense classics as Walsh and company serve up one outrageous sight gag after another with a bunch of movable blocks, a handheld window frame, an oversize map of Scotland, rubber fish, and a steering wheel, along with physical comedy galore. (Just wait till you see Tippie’s fabulously fit Richard Hannay maneuver across the stage from high above with only his arms and legs gripping a ceiling-high side-to-side cable.)

Tippie’s pitch-perfect take on Robert Donat’s Richard Hannay is as deliciously droll as it is admirably athletic, Huston captivates throughout in various accents and states of distress, and the indefatigable Schaye and Cass prove themselves masters of quick changes, comedy shtick, and split-second back-and-forth transformations with nothing but a change of hat.

If there’s anything to carp about in South Pasadena’s The 39 Steps, it is that at least fifteen minutes of Barlow’s script would seem to have been left on the cutting room floor.

I certainly can’t complain about Nick Foran’s hilariously suspense-enhancing sound design mix of music and effects, or the myriad accessories that allow costume designer Michael Mullen to transform actors from character to character in mere seconds, or Leigh Allen’s equally fine lighting design, or Clay Wilcox’s clever set.

The 39 Steps is produced by Stephen Goodwin, Sally Smythe, and Cass. Samantha Burkett is stage manager and Jacqui Kolker is assistant stage manager. Austin Hall alternates with Cass as Clown 2.

Though I highly recommend seeing the 1930s Hitchcock masterpiece before the show, both to more easily follow its myriad plot twists and turns and to appreciate the ingenuity of replicating them all on a shoestring budget with the teeny-tiniest of casts, even those who haven’t done their preshow homework are in for laugh after laugh after laugh.

Deleted scenes aside, South Pasadena Theatre Workshop’s The 39 Steps is guaranteed to have you rolling in the aisles.

South Pasadena Theatre Workshop, 1507 El Centro St, South Pasadena.
www.SouthPasadenaTheatreWorkshop.com

–Steven Stanley
August 17, 2024

Tags: John Buchan, Los Angeles Theater Review, Patrick Barlow, South Pasadena Theatre Workshop