The 39 Steps

Until Feb 13 2010 Criterion Theatre, 218-223 Piccadilly, London, SW1Y 4XA Full details & map

Theatre: West End

Critics' choice

Time Out says 

Posted: Thu Apr 23 2009

There's a wonderful '80s comedy sketch where one extremely effete doctor turns to another and declares, 'I learnt everything I know about women from the novels of John Buchan.' Though Buchan was aggressively heterosexual, his emphasis on a world where a chap's upper lip was as stiffly starched as his collar meant there was little room for ladies - pleasant creatures though they were - in his tales of intrigue.

When Hitchcock adapted Buchan's 'The 39 Steps', however, he introduced a love interest in a version which Buchan later conceded was better than his own. In this stage version, Patrick Barlow has continued the honourable tradition of mucking around with Buchan's original, keeping the love interest (now elegantly played by new cast member Rachel Pickup) and adding a whirligig of self-conscious theatrical effects in a production where four actors evoke everyone from lingerie salesmen to a housekeeper who screams like a steam-train.

Charles Edwards is Richard Hannay, a gentleman with irony in his soul, able to avert disaster with the merest twitch of a courteous eyebrow - until a mysterious female foreigner is stabbed in his apartment. His flight from London to the Highlands to trace her killer and evade arrest himself is depicted with DIY ingenuity through such props as hatstands which double up as Scotsmen, and three ladders which metamorphose ropily into the Forth Bridge.

The point's to spin the straw of theatrical mediocrity into gold standard comedy, and to watch clowns Rupert Degas and Simon Gregor playing four people at once in a flying frenzy of wigs and accents is one of many highlights. If Buchan had ever done anything as girlie as giggle, surely he would have done it here.

Criterion Theatre details

Criterion Theatre, 218-223 Piccadilly, London, SW1Y 4XA

Transport Piccadilly Circus 

Telephone

0870 060 2313, bookings 020 7432 4220

Criterion Theatre website

Times Mon-Sat 8pm; Tue Mat 3pm; Sat Mat 4pm

Prices £12.50-£45. Runs 1hr 35mins. Booking to Feb 13 2010

Criterion Theatre map

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