Exciting actors, stage conventions make ’39 Steps’ a success

You can't be blamed for approaching a stage version of "The 39 Steps" (retitled here as "Alfred Hithcock's The 39 Steps") with trepidation. Director Hitchcock is a master of cinematic visual suspense. And for all its seriousness, the 1935 film is very humorous. How could it possibly work as a full-length comedy sketch with four actors?

Somehow Patrick Barlow has figured a way.

The unusual Tony Award-winning show has been a hit in New York, and now the Utah Shakespearean Festival has come up with what feels like a definitive production. It's hard to imagine the script any funnier.

Barlow keeps the outline of the story -- a British Everyman who stumbles onto an international espionage plot in the early days of World War II -- but reinvents it. He and director Eli Simon's main concern seems to be celebrating stage conventions. It's amazing how strobe lighting, cutout dolls, trunks, chairs, scrims, projections, fog, ventriloquism, dummies and "film noir" lighting can transform a near-bare stage. As an audience member, you wonder repeatedly, "How the heck did they do that?"

Of course, the clever staging wouldn't mean much without equally exciting actors. Brian Vaughn as the Everyman has exhibited many times over his expertise at physical comedy. The way he can wrangle his way out from underneath a dead body deserves its own Wikipedia mention. But he also brings a surprising amount of warmth to the character. No matter how much we laugh, we want more than anything to see him get the girl.

David Ivers, Aaron Galligan-Stierle and Carol Linnea Johnson, in a variety of roles, each get the chance of a lifetime to demonstrate versatility. It's difficult to believe so many different heartbeats can come from a single body.

You don't have to have seen the film to enjoy this, but I suspect you'll laugh more hardily if you do. (I pity, though, the people that see the film after this. They'll never be able to take the movie seriously.)

People often tell me they prefer films to the theater because films can provide so much more realism. In Hitchcock's version, he showed us just how magical movies could be. In a very different way, the live version does equal justice to the stage. It could hook nonbelievers forever.