Theatre requires the suspension of disbelief of an audience, a willingness of the audience to accept a play as reality in order to enjoy it. Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps completely turns that notion on its head. The play, an incredibly loose adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s incredibly loose film adaptation of John Buchan’s novel, quite happily breaks the fourth wall at every opportunity possible. The results are rather delightful.
Director David Allsopp, aided by assistant director Courtney Farrow, has assembled a cracker of a team. With four actors playing 139 characters and a fairly minimal set design, the success of the play hinges on the chemistry of the cast and their commitment to the bit. The play is a constant swirl of action and characters and chaos that somehow manages to walk a tightrope of being a slapstick comedy and spy thriller. (Just to clarify: the whole point of this show is really to just cram as many jokes in as possible at any given moment. The plot is an afterthought.) In a play where actors are required to ham it up and everything is over-exaggerated for laughs, it would be easy for things to end disastrously, but Allsopp and Farrow bring out the best in their cast, ensuring that the joke never falls flat.
Leading the cast is Daniel Ferris as Richard Hannay. Ferris’ Hannay is arrogant yet amiable, the straight man to the mayhem surrounding him. One of the funniest moments of the night is Ferris turning around and yelling, “Just get on with it!” at his scene partners. Cassandra Gorman pushes the plot along in her roles as Annabella, Margaret and Pamela. Gorman has gone to a lot of effort to create clearly defined characters, giving each character distinct mannerisms. She is adept at accents, flipping from German to English to Scottish with ease. The pair give some semblance of structure to the show, whereas Faith Jessel and Mitch Doran provide… pure pandemonium. Jessel and Doran bounce off one another with ease, quickly changing costumes, accents, and occasionally gender. Their performances are the true standout of the night, showcasing their incredible range as they tackle playing over 100 characters between them. (And occasionally playing multiple characters within a single scene.) Some highlights include Jessel as a soft-spoken old man giving an introductory speech at a meeting, Doran and Jessel as kind but somewhat dimwitted Scottish hoteliers, and a scene on a train that allows for some well-executed physical comedy and sees them playing at least seven characters between them. With pitch perfect comedic timing and an impressive command of various accents, they make sustaining the raw energy their roles demand look easy.
The stagehands - Jill Klopfer, Kate Kelly, and Tonia Davis - are also a part of the action, managing to get quite a few laughs from the audience. Not only will they occasionally appear on a fully lit stage to make a scene change, they’ll also pop up in a scene with signs to let the audience know where the characters are, or with a pedestal fan and a handheld fog machine to simulate steam in a train tunnel. When they appear during the curtain call, they really do deserve a hand for all their efforts throughout the show. Lighting design by Wayne Chee (who is one of the best lighting designers in community theatre, if not the best) is impeccable and works beautifully with Geoff Jones’ sound design. No spoilers, but Jones has included a few gags that have the audiences in stitches.
To be a little nitpicky, there are a few scenes in the second act where the play does seem to take itself seriously and these moments drag a little, feeling tonally out of place with the rest of the show. There were also a few technical aspects that perhaps worked better in theory than in practice - for example, there are a couple of scenes where the actors sit in the audience, which meant the front few rows were either awkwardly turning around in their seats or chose to focus on the empty stage and simply listen to the actors - but to be perfectly honest, this production is so fun and so thoroughly entertaining that it's easy to overlook the things that don’t work as well.
Highly engaging and laugh-out-loud funny, The 39 Steps is Pymble Players at their very best. If you’re after a ticket, you are out of luck - the season is now sold out. (But you can join the waitlist in case tickets become available.) As they look towards their 2025 season at the Zenith Theatre in Chatswood, I can’t think of a better way to say farewell to their home at Bromley Ave.
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