The 39 Steps at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts

Mix a Hitchcock masterpiece with a juicy spy novel, add a dash of Monty Python and you have The 39 Steps, a fast-paced whodunit for anyone who loves the magic of theatre! This 2-time Tony and Drama Desk Award-winning treat is packed with nonstop laughs, over 150 zany characters (played by a ridiculously talented cast of 4), an onstage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers and some good old-fashioned romance! A riotous blend of virtuoso performances and wildly inventive stagecraft, The 39 Steps amounts to an unforgettable evening of pure pleasure!

This version of The 39 Steps is based on John Buchan’s groundbreaking
novel, Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic movie and the exquisite idea of two Northern English writers Nobby Dimon and Simon Corble of doing the whole thing with just four actors. One of the thrilling things about writing this was the challenge of putting an entire movie on stage – complete with train chases, plane crashes, shadowy murders, beautiful spies, trilbied heavies, dastardly villains with little fingers missing, not to mention some of the most iconic moments in the history of cinema. There is much opportunity for comedy and satire here. But it’s also a love story. A man and a woman who have never loved anyone, yet miraculously – through all the daredevil feats and derring-do – discover the beating of their own true hearts. That there’s a reason to live and a reason to love. And above all a reason – as our hero (fired up by love though he doesn’t know that’s what it is yet) blissfully realizes in his passionately impromptu political speech – to look after each other and look after the world. “Let’s all set ourselves resolutely to make this world a happier place! A decent world! A good world! A world where no nation plots against nation! Where no neighbour plots against neighbour, where there’s no persecution or hunting down, where everybody gets a square deal and a sporting chance and where people try to help and not to hinder! A world where suspicion and cruelty and fear have been forever banished! That’s the sort of world I want! Is that the sort of world you want?” Words written – remarkably – in 1935 by one of Alfred Hitchcock’s team of writers and as resonant today as they were then. As someone said, the finest comedy comes from the greatest truth. Or was it the best comedy is deadly serious? Or was it play it for real and not the gag (that was Buster Keaton). Anyway, whoever said what when, I’d respectfully ask you to remember the story, too. It’s there behind the mayhem.
- Patrick Barlow, November 2009, from the Adapter’s Foreword to The 39 Steps, New York: Samuel French, 2009