On my own again. Went to see 39 Steps.

Where to start? The Hitchcock motifs, the on-stage costume changes, the clever wordplay… it’s all spot-on. I sat quite far to the right and missed a little bit, but I did get to see backstage left instead. It’s always nice to see what’s behind the magic.

The acting was quite good, especially considering that four actors play over one hundred roles. (The male lead, however, only plays one character, so it’s more like three actors playing over one hundred roles minus one.) Character changes were crisp and quite distinguishable. Accents were good and consistent when they were portraying German and Scottish characters. At no point was I confused.

What I liked about the staging was how it made fun of general technical difficulties that happen in plays. A lot of the time, characters would shout to cue changes and/or refer to things that were not yet on stage, much to the confusion of other characters. Some might’ve seen this as a distraction from the play, but I was too busy laughing to care. This probably has to do more with writing than direction and staging, but the staging ultimately pulled it off (because we don’t see a script; we see what’s on stage).

A high point for me was the train compartment bit in the first act, wherein two actors played five characters in the same scene. Greg Haiste played a newsie and a passenger, and Nick Holder played the train conductor, a policeman, and a passenger. The actors held hats and switched them as they changed characters, and delightful chaos ensued. From what I remember, there was only one “passenger” on stage most of the time, and the other character would be playing another character. The fast-paced madcap feel of it reminded me of the Marx Brothers, specifically Duck Soup and the Tootsie-Fruitsie ice cream skit from A Day At The Races, though the latter was far slower and the timing therein more meticulous.

As mentioned earlier, there were many Hitchcock motifs. the use of Scene D’Amour from Vertigo in the inn room scene, the “I get terrible… vertigo” pun when one character refuses to climb up a cliff, the use of the Psycho theme at some suspenseful point (can’t remember which), and of course the “You could say that He was a Man Who Knew Too Much” when a character died after revealing information. Some people aren’t a fan of puns, but I love them… the cheesier, the better.

Another highlight was continued use of the gasp track during one scene. Still another was Nick Holder donning half of a trench coat over a suit, playing a character in profile, and “changing” by turning to the other side. This rivaled the aforementioned train compartment bit in the first scene.

What made 39 Steps successful was that the period flair didn’t end with the costumes; the comedic style was retro thirties, as well, giving it that  The fast-paced dialogue reminded me distinctly of His Girl Friday, and the comedic style reminded me of the Marx Brothers. (And the Memory Man was clearly reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin with his mannerisms and pencil mustache.) All in all, 39 Steps didn’t merely illustrate the time it depicted, it emulated it.