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REVIEW: The 39 Steps
Published: 11/3/2012 10:15 AM
Last Modified: 11/3/2012 10:15 AM

"The 39 Steps" is pretty close to being 39 things all at once.

First and foremost, it is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film about a British gentleman adventurer who finds himself on the run for his life when a women is murdered in his flat.

Second, it's a parody of the film that sends up its stiff-upper-lip sporting-chance-fair-play sentiments with the sort of gleeful satire of Monty Python.

It also is a celebration -- and again, a spoof -- of how, with a few fine actors, some highly moveable props, and an endless stream of different hats and coats, the theatre can make just about any situation come to life, up to an including a chase through, around and on top of a moving train.

But of all the things "The 39 Steps" is, the most important is this -- it is one of the most thoroughly entertaining shows out there. And it's at the Tulsa PAC's Williams Theatre for only two more performance, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

This national touring production, brought to town by the Tulsa PAC Trust, stars Dan Fenaughty as Richard Hannay, the aforementioned adventurer, who has to make his way from his drab London flat to the wilds of Scotland to avert some sort of international intrigue.

Don't worry if bits and pieces of the plot do not register -- they aren't supposed to. What you are supposed to notice is the characters -- dozens of the them, all performed by the other three members of the cast.

Larissa Klinger has three major parts. She's the German agent whose murder send Hannay on the lam. She's also Margaret, the wife of a rustic Scottish farmer, who helps Hannay out of a scrape. And she's Pamela, the "Hitchcock blonde" who starts out as Hannay nemesis, then becomes his reluctant confidante.

Everyone else -- policemen, politicians, innkeepers, farmers, spies and counterspies, music hall entertainers, even bits of the landscape -- are embodied by the Clowns, Nicholas Wilder and Tobias Shaw, who navigate a welter on quick costume changes and accents with the grace and efficiency of greyhounds racing after rabbits. They're a whole lot funnier, as well.

Patrick Barlow, who adapted the film into this show, incorporates a number of references and visual puns to Hitchcock films -- even managing to work in a cameo by Hitchcock's distinctive silhouette in one of the shadow puppet sequences.

It's all so deliriously funny and entertaining, that really the only thing to do is experience it for yourself. But as we said, the only chances are today at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

For tickets: 918-596-7111 or tulsaworld.com/mytix


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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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