The 39 Steps, Theatre by the Lake
By Ross Brewster
It’s a madcap, zany adventure, a comedy thriller that’s pure entertainment.
Forget any preconceived notions of theatre as the exclusive province of highbrow lovers of the classics.
Keswick Theatre by the Lake’s performance, very loosely based on author John Buchan’s 1915 novella The 39 Steps, and subsequent cinema films, is an exuberant whirlwind performed by a marvellous cast of just four actors playing numerous roles.
The comic mayhem is just the right sort of tonic for these dark days. Breathless and brilliantly executed, this fast moving spoof involves murder, spies, international intrigue, a chase from London to the Scottish Highlands, and some love interest.
The fact that two cast members, Lucy Keirl and Niall Ransome, are listed in the programme as “clowns” is a giveaway to the essence of the performance with its near impossible pace.
The great skill is not just that of the actors, but also the off-stage synchronicity matched to the sense of timing of the performers in this “in the round” production.
Stiff upper-lipped English toff Richard Hannay is played with remarkable almost gymnastic skills by Dave Hearn. There’s one hold your breath scene when he balances, crawls and almost falls from a plank suspended between two high ladders.
I saw it from “the gods” the night I was there. A bit like row Z of the third tier at Wembley Stadium. But it certainly provided a different overview of the stage and of Hearn’s athletic performance on a version of the high wire.
Hannay, bored as he stalks round his bachelor flat in an expensive part of London, determines to take a trip to the theatre. There he meets a foreign beauty who ends up dead, a knife in her back, in his flat.
Naturally, Hannay is the only suspect. He goes on the run, wanted by the police and even more so by spies who mean to steal secrets on behalf of an evil foreign power.
You can’t get a real steam train into a theatre, or for that matter the Forth Bridge, so in this production they improvise, a theme that continues with lots of jokes about doors and windows.
The fast and furious nature of the thriller is emphasised during Hannay’s fraught journey into the Highlands where he comes across various Scottish characters with implausible accents, unstable wigs and the urge to dance jigs at every opportunity.
There are times when it gets a bit hysterical with character changes on the hoof. You wonder how the actors remember just which character they are playing as they switch around from one to another.
Olivia Onyehara plays a series of rather earnest female roles as an effective counterpoint to Hannay’s unflappable, stiff pencil moustache upper lipped Englishman.
For a man who has been left to save his country and quite possibly the entire free world, Hannay is remarkably insouciant about the whole thing, narrowly escaping his pursuers at every twist and turn in the plot.
But what are the 39 Steps that appear to hold the key to the chase? And where does the memory man, doing a turn on stage at the London Palladium, come into it?
I imagine most have either seen the films or read Buchan’s ripping yarn and know the significance of his act. For those who don’t know I’m not about to spoil the denouement of the tale.
As plays go this one definitely does not take itself seriously and yet, in all the improbable chaos, it’s the ingenuity and slick timing that makes the whole thing work so effectively, and with often hilarious results.
The 39 Steps is a perfect antidote to a wet Lakeland summer. It runs at the lakeside theatre until September 2, with selected matinees.
