Review: 39 Steps at Hull Truck Theatre

“…daft, dazzling and quite possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen all year…”

39 Steps by John Buchan adapted by Patrick Barlow, Hull Truck Theatre

By Sean Sable

Can you keep a secret? Good, because this story is really rather embarrassing. When I was seven, I learned a joke. I found it on an ice-lolly stick and immediately proceeded to pretend I had invented it myself and tell it to everyone I knew. It worked something like this: you say “knock, knock” and they, of course, are eager to know “who’s there”; so you say “banana” and they, on absolute tenterhooks, respond with “banana who?” But instead of landing your punchline, you subvert expectations and begin again with “knock, knock.” This continues for maybe two or three rounds until you finally say “orange” and they, delighted with the change in pattern, say “orange who?” Finally, you dazzle them with “orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” And the crowd goes WILD and declares you a comic genius.

Or at least it should. I wouldn’t know. Why? Because at seven, with the full swagger of someone who had personally invented the best gag of all time, I had one motto: if three is good, nineteen is better. So, when it came to the repetition of banana, I would continue the conceit to a point so far beyond the normal limits of comedy that only a quadratic equation could adequately describe it. To make matters worse, as a budding comic, I wasn’t great at reading the temperature of the room. There was no distinction in my head between groans of amusement and groans of agony. To me, watching someone become annoyed with the joke was hilarious. Never mind the experience on the other side.

It wasn’t until my godmother, Debbie, took me aside that I learned two things: firstly, I was best not laying claim to a joke that was older than Methuselah, and secondly, jokes are about timing. Say something three times and it’s funny. Say it a fourth time and the extension becomes the joke. Say it nineteen times and feel lucky no one wants to go to prison for murdering you. This advice, the heart of comedy, really, is some of the best wisdom anyone has ever passed down to me. And since that time, I have made it a bit of a personal study. When I watch comedy, I wait to see if they cut the joke just where I would have, or if that one extra time leaves me delighted or dismayed. So, when I went to see The 39 Steps at Hull Truck Theatre, I was thrilled to discover a company who knew precisely how far to push a joke before somebody considered calling the police.

I was excited to find that there is a rather lovely Yorkshire pedigree behind The 39 Steps. Originally devised by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon in 1995, the four-actor comedy premiered at the Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond, North Yorkshire, before touring village halls across the North. In 2005, Patrick Barlow reworked the adaptation, drawing on John Buchan’s 1915 novel and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film, and the new version premiered at West Yorkshire Playhouse (now Leeds Playhouse) before going on to Olivier and Tony Award-winning success. Now, in a co-production between Derby Theatre and Hull Truck Theatre, acclaimed physical comedy director Cal McCrystal takes the reins. The story follows Richard Hannay, a debonair London gentleman (with an excellent moustache) who finds himself accused of murder after a mysterious woman is killed in his flat. With the police on his heels and a sinister spy ring closing in, Hannay flees to Scotland in a desperate attempt to clear his name and uncover the secret of the 39 Steps. Originally a thriller, The 39 Steps has been reimagined as a comedy send-up of everything we love about Hitchcock and film noir.

When the curtain goes up, we are given the bare bones of a scene: a leather chair, a phone, some books, a small table and a lamp. But, in a glorious marriage of projection and set design, behind this little tableau is a full-height scrim onto which a black-and-white backdrop is projected. Jen McGinley keeps the props to a minimum throughout, with many scenes having little more than a few steamer trunks or, in one case, a garment rack. Much of the hard work of scene-setting falls to Chris Lincé’s projections, with each new environment morphing into the next more smoothly than I would have expected. When Hannay meets Pamela on a train, the flickering carriage windows transport me back to some of my favourite golden-era thrillers. It is a budget-conscious yet thematically rich choice that punches above its weight.

Costumes, also by McGinley, show exactly how much attention to detail and an eye for scale can bring to a production. With such sparse sets, it’s the little details that steep us in the world of the show. From Hannay’s Harris Tweed suit and spectator shoes to the bowler hats and humped backs of the city council members, McGinley knows precisely when to remain restrained and just when to let things get a little bit weird.

Ian Scott’s lighting is understated, as expected when a production leans into projection, but always used to good effect. The subtle lift of the lights during the “Memmorahhhhhhh Show” pulls us right into the performance. The projection spill adds dimension to the floor, while intense spots in the more dramatic moments have a filmic quality that would have satisfied even Hitchcock.

As I approach the bit where I usually talk about the performances, I find myself so excited to tell you how good they were that I almost want to keep a little in the tank, lest I appear too effusive. Eh, sod it. I’m going all in. As the six-star rating should have announced, this was one of my favourite shows of the year, and a huge part of that was the absolutely stellar performances. I refuse to select a favourite (but if I did, you know it would be Tom Mitchell’s stagehand antics and his absolutely lifelike performance as Chief Inspector Albright), so I will just take the four principal performers in turn.

Ryan Starling was radiant as Richard Hannay, blending wide-eyed charm with the character’s Teflon-smooth playboy exterior. This was at its best in the train carriage sequence, where he continually plays musical chairs with two passengers, attempting to avoid detection by the police whilst they tell a near-pathological number of wife jokes. Later, his slip into boyish innocence adds enough sensitivity to the “only one bed at the inn” trope to make the romantic subplot believable. Playing Annabella, Margaret and Pamela, Sophie Bloor was as versatile as she was flexible (meant more literally than you can imagine), showing off both incredible accent work and physical comedy chops. Her ragdoll performance as Annabella opens the show with some of the best comic moments of the evening. Later, as Pamela, she has all the poise and dignity of a Hitchcockian heroine, managing somehow to survive gag after gag without the tiniest hint of corpsing. If there was ever a straight lady, she is it.

Please excuse me whilst I gush about the clowning for a moment. It’s no understatement to say that James Keningale and Kathryn Perkins are the glue that holds the show together. They played an impossible number of characters, with breathtakingly quick changes, and each time they stepped onstage, my ribs tightened in anticipation of a painful amount of laughter. Commitment was high across the board, but the clowns took it to eleven. James Keningale’s milkman near the top of the first act was an instant charmer, and his constant winks and nods through the fourth wall made him an audience favourite. But the best clowning of the evening goes to Kathryn Perkins for the extremely understated (ahem) death of Mr Memory. I laughed so hard, I think I pulled something. Never has an onstage death been so unwilling to end. Every time he seemed ready to expire, another convulsion brought him roaring back. Nineteen bananas? Amateur hour. This was a masterclass.

I think the biggest risk with a show this dense with comedy is that it is easy to sweep it under the rug of “farce” or expect it to cling too tightly to the stakes of its thriller origins. Whilst there are dashes of farce, this is a production that puts clowning front and centre, treating Hitchcock as its playground. It blends intelligent wit, broad winks and physical commitment in just the right proportions, all delivered with expert timing. When the jokes stretch, they do so with a keen eye on the audience’s tolerance for letting things get weird. Then, with precision, they drop the beat and get the party started. Comedy isn’t about learning one routine and then hamming it into the ground, come hell or high water. It’s about building enough trust with the audience that they are willing to follow you out onto the tightrope. Last night’s performance was a triumph. The only thing I could wish for to make this production better is a longer run and a wider tour. At the interval, I thought I might text my son and tell him to grab tickets when it went down to London, only to discover that this little gem, for now, ends here in the North.

The 39 Steps takes every rule of sensible comedy, stretches it to breaking point and then gives it one last glorious shove. It’s daft, dazzling and quite possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. Go and see it at Hull Truck, and if anyone asks whether it’s worth the trip, tell them I said banana. Repeatedly.

39 Steps plays at Hull Truck Theatre until Saturday 14 November. Tickets are available here.

Sean Sable is a Yorkshire-based freelance writer and editor specialising in Young Adult and Horror fiction, frequently at the same time. When she isn’t buried under a pile of books and manuscripts, she is looking for her keys and having extensive one-sided conversations, in Swedish, with her deaf cat. You can find her online at: www.seansable.co.uk