Photo Credit: 39 Steps UK Cast, by Tristram Kenton

Grade: A+

Last year, when the touring cast of The 39 Steps came to San Fransisco, the show was a huge hit, but the tickets were pricey and quickly sold out. If you didn’t have a chance to see it, you have three more weekends to catch the more affordable version at Theaterworks in the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. I haven’t seen a comedy this funny or this fresh on stage in a couple of years, and almost never in regional theater. Even if you aren’t a usually interested in drama, I strongly recommend you give this show a chance. Rarely does one performance show off the unique capacities of theater as well as this full length spoof.

The 39 Steps shares its plot with the 1935 Hitchcock movie of the same name and the book by John Buchan, but it trades suspense for farce and physical comedy. You man not be on the edge of your seat about whether Hannay, the protagonist, will survive as he flees across England from the police who have wrongfully accused him of murdering a secrete agent, or across Scotland from the Nazi-esque foreign agents that want the information said secret agent left him. Instead, you will wonder every minute who is going to play the next character, and how.

The entire play is done with only 4 actors.  Posh British bachelor Hannay is played by Mark Phillips, and all the women are played by Rebecca Dines. But the two actors who really make this show a home run are Cassidy Brown and Dan Hiatt, who each play so many (sometimes overlapping) roles that the playbill lists them only as Clown 1 and Clown 2. If you think this sounds like a gimmick, you’re probably right, but the creativity and hilarity that ensues are really the only thing that makes this complicated plot a golden comedy. The Clowns switch flawlessly back and forth with hats, coats, accents and acting quirks, often even in the middle of scenes.

The only thing more versatile than the actors is the set. Watch as a traveling trunks become a train with surprisingly believable pantomime. Then watch as the same trunk reappears in the next act to become a car to cart away fugitives. The actors move windows (Rear Windows) around to help them escape and spend five minutes tangled up in a wooden fence they could have walked around. The character’s sincerity in believing that these sets are part of the on-stage world makes these throwback comedy moments one of my favorite parts of the show.

Patrick Barlow, who adapted the stage version,  didn’t miss a beat when it came to slipping inside jokes into the dialogue and director Robert Kelly has every motion perfectly choreographed for comedic effect. They capitalize on everything you think is ridiculous about suspense thrillers  in this self-aware tribute to the mystery. Hitchcock fans in the audience will be pleased to see the actors pay homage to clips of some of his best works, though they don’t always really fit in the show. Nevertheless, they are consistently clever. (Example: “What direction is that?” “North by Northwest!”)

The show does drag a bit in the second half. The writers spend so much time in the first act on physical gags that the second act gets bogged down in completing the plot. Still, it isn’t all tedium and dialogue, because whenever the “Clowns” appear the audience will be laughing. And, after all, the plot did earn Buchan’s book the epithet “One of the worlds greatest novels of suspense.”

The 39 Steps has been so popular at Theaterworks that its run has been extended until the 20^th, so don’t miss it. The show is too involved for most local and community theaters to attempt so we may not see another version in the Bay Area for a while.