THEATRE REVIEW

The 39 Steps

Theatre: Mayfield dinner Theatre

Directed by: John kirkpatrick

Starring: John ullyatt, belinda Cornish, Chris bullough, Troy O'donnell

Running: through april 10

Tickets: 780-483-4051

At the start of The 39 Steps, debonair Richard Hannay explains his plight, in a nutshell. "I'm bored," he declares, tired of war, the news, life, himself. What he needs to combat this ennui is "something trivial, something utterly mindless and pointless.... "I know! I'll go to the theatre!"

It works for Hannay, who soon finds himself embroiled in a madcap plot of preposterous complication. And, hey, it'll work for you, too -for largely the same reasons, in this frothy, deliciously ingenious four-actor comic spoof, which irreverently does hand-springs on the altar of Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1935 spy thriller (and the hoary 1915 John Buchan novel).

Theatre has spent vast quantities of time, moolah, and angst (witness Broadway's Spiderman musical, injuring actors nightly) struggling in vain to "do" film onstage. Ah, revenge is so sweet, as you'll see in John Kirkpatrick's expert production. The fun of The 39 Steps lies in its theatrical charms -its grand ambition of re-telling the Hitchcock film on a shoestring, with a hilariously minimal cast size. It's a triumph of frugality and wit over budget.

Mind you, when you've only got four actors, and props instead of a set, all have to be topgrade and perfectly in synch. And they are.

Kirkpatrick's forces, including designer Narda McCarroll, are all Shakespeare Festival veterans. John Ullyatt reminds us, in splendid fashion, what we've been missing in this debased age: dashing, moustached, square-jawed, handsome leading men, who cock an eyebrow

and snap off vowels like Waterford crystal. Ullyatt is effortlessly deadpan, as Hanney finds himself on the lam, falsely accused of murder, uncovering a dastardly plot to smuggle secrets out of the country.

The wonderful Belinda Cornish plays an alluring spy who alludes mysteriously to "ze 39 shtepps" before expiring with a knife in her back. She's also a wistful country wife, and the cool-unto-hostile Hitchcock blonde to whom Hannay will be hand-cuffed in the course of, er, "events."

The events department belongs to two supple, very busy vaudevillians, Chris Bullough and Troy O'Donnell, who literally throw themselves into doing everything. With simple chairs, a couple of ladders, three boxes, a door, a window frame, they create trains, cars, Scottish hotels, the Forth Bridge, for heaven's sake. Meanwhile, they change genders, hair, coats, hats, gaits, accents before your very eyes, sometimes four or five at a time in a scene, to be every cop, thuggish yokel, dour Scot, rural politico.... They're sublime.

Film buffs will be in heaven watching Hannay escape a cottage through a rear window, or hearing someone complain of vertigo. In one very funny shadowplay, Hannay is pursued across the moors by aircraft, a la North By Northwest. The show is full of Bernard Herrmann musical riffs. But you don't have to be a Hitchcock scholar to have a blast at The 39 Steps. I'm not, and I did.

Besides, there are lots of cheeky cheaptheatre jokes, too. Actually, the show's own history, from humble beginnings at the West Yorkshire Playhouse to its re-think by Patrick Barlow (of the National Theatre of Brent, famous for its 55-minute Ring Cycle), and on to the big time with nary a big-name star, is an anti-establishment theatre joke all on its own.

This Mayfield production is a worthy heir.

lnicholls@edmontonjournal.com