Playwright: John Buchan
Adapted by: Patrick Barlow
Original concept: Simon Corble & Nobby Dimonr
Director: Maria Aitkin
Synopsis: The 39 Steps is best known as Hitchcock’s 1935 classic move thriller. This brand new version is performed by four actors playing a minimum of 150 roles and contains every single legendary scene from the award-winning movie – including the chase on the Flying Scotsman, the escape on the Forth Bridge, the first theatrical bi-plane crash ever staged and the sensational death-defying finale in the London Palladium, besides many other favourite cinematic moments, including the memorable and controversial ‘stockings and suspenders’ scene!
NEW YORK TIMES:
"This fast, frothy exercise in legerdemain is throwaway theater at its finest. And that’s no backhanded compliment."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS:
"Suspense-meister Alfred Hitchcock probably never imagined his thriller 'The 39 Steps' had the makings of a hilarious comedy, but the show ...is a dizzy delight." & "If 'The 39 Steps' makes a misstep, it's having an intermission. Once this fast-paced fun ride leaves the station, you don't want to get off. "
Read the whole review HERE.
TIME OUT NY:
"Escape is also pretty much all this amusing diversion—in which four actors play several dozen characters to bravura comic effect—offers the average theatergoer: about 100 minutes of chuckleworthy theatrical silliness that, while never hilarious, is thoroughly clever."
Read the whle review HERE.
NEW YORK POST:
"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."
Read the whole review HERE.
USA TODAY:
"39 Steps isn't likely to earn a Tony Award to accompany its Olivier, especially given the unusual assortment of weighty new plays that opened on Broadway last fall. But it's an impeccably crafted trifle, a lot tastier than many of the richer confections that have turned up in commercial theater lately."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEWSDAY:
"An utterly pointless but physically and conceptually ingenious spoof of Alfred Hitchcock's equally foolish but stylish and dead-serious spy thriller from 1935." & "In fact, given the assignment and the material, the extended sketch is as clever as it knows how to be."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK SUN:
"The Hitchcock cameo is pretty funny."
Read the whole review HERE.
VARIETY:
"The central joke in this frenetic spoof is the utter unsuitability of the material -- with its high-speed chases across moors, rivers, an elevated bridge and the roof of a moving train -- for stage presentation." & "The real key to its success, however, is that the thriller element is entirely secondary to the laughs milked from shoestring stagecraft that redefines the term low-tech." & "As a giddy display of theatrical invention that makes a virtue of its minimal means, "The 39 Steps" is an entertaining diversion."
Read the whole review HERE.
