When "Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps" was announced as part of Swift Creek Mill Theatre's season, it sounded like an ideal match — a scrappy little Broadway comedy with lots of quick changes and bare-bones sets.
The Mill's artistic director, Tom Width, is just the person for this. His long experience as a set designer and as a director of fast-paced comedies prepared him for such an undertaking.
And a fine match it is. Taking off from the 1935 film (based on John Buchan's 1915 novel), as adapted by Patrick Barlow, "The 39 Steps" is a spy story, a police chase, a romance and a slam-bang comedy.
This four-actor delight was a hit in London, then played Broadway for two years and Off-Broadway for one more, closing in January 2011.
And while the four actors have to be great — and in this production they are — it's essential to have extensive lighting, sound, costume and set support to make the machine go.
In addition to Width's set — his most appealing in some time — Joe Doran's lights and Paul Deiss' sound (including his original music) are executed with admirable precision. Maura Lynch Cravey's costumes are great for the period and for the speed with which they are whipped on and off.
As for the story, 37-year-old bachelor Richard Hannay (played with élan and tremendous energy by Dan Stackhouse) is mooning about his London flat when he decides to go to the theater. During a vaudeville act, he meets a German woman who draws him into a sinister plot involving secret information that's being spirited out of the country. Before long, the cops are after him, and he flees to Scotland, meeting a slew of oddball characters along the way.
Most of those characters are played by Frank Creasy and Steve King, who flip props and hats and coats between them to zip from one impersonation to the next. Newsboys, policemen, hoteliers, lingerie salesmen — nothing is beyond the ability of these two.
And the style is absurd, using every theater trick and artifice to represent trains and trestles, cars and airplanes, fireplaces and windows. K Strong plays the German woman, as well as Pamela and Margaret, two of Hannay's love interests. She lends spunk and tongue-in-cheek seriousness to all three.
The second act's energy flags a bit, and some scene changes go on too long, but overall this is a fun and funny entertainment enhanced by terrific stagecraft.
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