Resident Ensemble Players Present THE 39 STEPS, Now thru 5/10

Take one juicy spy novel, mix in a healthy dose of Monty Python humor, add a dash of hilarious whodunit and you have Alfred Hitchcock's THE 39 STEPS, a wildly inventive comedy presented by the Resident Ensemble Players tonight, April 23 through May 10 at the Roselle Center for the Arts, Newark, DE.

Adapted by Patrick Barlow from Hitchcock's film, The 39 Steps turns the "wrongly accused man on the run" plot on its head with a riotous a cast of four handling over 100 outrageous characters. Fast-paced and full of surprises, this send-up of Hitchcock's thriller is a raucous farce of espionage, romance, and adventure.

Richard Hannay discovers that the beautiful woman he meets at the theatre is a foreign spy, entangled in international espionage. When she turns up dead in his flat, he must go on the lam in a race from London to Scotland and back to prove that he is not a killer. From a careening car chase to a train-top dash to a World War I biplane pursuit, Hannay perseveres in order to save himself and find the answer to the mystery of the "39 Steps".

"You can't. You just can't tell this kind of story on the stage, with its chases and airplanes and trains. But they do!" says director J. R. Sullivan. "It's like a circus act of four people telling a spectacularly reimagined tale of the original material with only simple props and an immense amount of imagination. I find the audacity of this play very funny. It has all forms of humor in it - it's witty, ironic, and satiric with wonderful physical comedy. And it's done in the most creatively absurd way possible."

The 39 Steps opens on Saturday, April 25 and runs through Sunday, May 10.

Preview performances of the play are on Thursday and Friday, April 23 and 24 at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are $23- $29, with discounts for students and seniors.

Additional fun can be found in the intimate Studio Theatre, right across the hall from the Thompson Theatre, with All in the Timing, a delightful collection of short comedies by David Ives. Among Ives' creations are three monkeys plotting revenge as they type out Shakespeare's Hamlet, a con man peddling a bogus Universal Language, and a guy in a diner discovering that his very bad day is referred to as being "in a Philadelphia". Ives creates a whirlwind tour-de-force of wit and wordplay as he explores the riotous ways in which language both unites and divides us.

All in the Timing plays through May 10.

Tickets for the productions can be purchased online at www.rep.udel.edu, by phone at (302) 831-2204, or in person at the Roselle Center for the Arts, 110 Orchard Rd., Newark, Monday through Friday from noon until 5:00 p.m.

Free pre-show and post-show special events for the production can be found online at www.rep.udel.edu.

The Roselle Center for the Arts is located at 110 Orchard Road, on the corner of Orchard Road and Kent Way, in Newark, Delaware. A convenient parking garage is attached to the Center.

A complete schedule, directions, and information on purchasing tickets can be found at the REP's website, www.rep.udel.edu or by calling the REP's box office at (302) 831-2204.

The REP's performances are sponsored in part by the Delaware Division of the Arts. Artist transportation is provided in part by Amtrak.

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