| High-spirited Tour for Patrick Barlow’s Buchan Adaptation |
At Black Rat |
| Black Rat Productions- 39 Steps , Theatr Mwldan , October 23, 2015 |
John Buchan fans of loyalty have never been pleased with Alfred Hitchcock. Scudder, the cause of all of Richard Hannay’s adventures, was in Buchan’s description “a slim man, with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue eyes”. That figure is some way distant from slinking black-suited Annabella Schmidt. In director Richard Tunley’s rambunctious version of Patrick Barlow’s monster hit she is played by Joanna Simpkins as a pistol-shooting femme fatale in a Louise Brooks-bob with a thickly Teutonic accent. “You are inwolved” she says to the phlegmatic Hannay who takes another puff on the pipe he never loses throughout his harum-scarum flight to the Highlands and back. But then Hitchcock gave his Hannay a sparkle in his casting. The Hannay in the original is a rum old cove. In “Greenmantle” he is sent in pursuit of a modern-day Mahdi who is unifying Islam against the Western Allies. His companions are a couple of tough chums and he confesses mid-adventure “Women had never come much my way and I knew as much about their ways as I knew about the Chinese language.” The Hannay of Patrick Barlow’s adaptation starts as a chap on his own bereft of pals. Among those who have dispersed is Chips Carruthers “eaten by crocodiles in the Limpopo.” Gareth John Bale’s Hannay wears a three-piece suit of Harris tweed. Suit and demeanour remain unruffled throughout his moorland flight and a five hundred mile motorcycle journey back south. “Golly” he exclaims as Annabella pitches over him in her last gasp of life. “Oh, crikey” is his response to an enforced clamber on the dizzying girders of the Forth railway bridge. “Toodle pip” he shouts to his pursuers as he escapes through yet another window. That success comes with ease is a bit of a myth. Patrick Barlow’s particular strand of comedy, a famous source allied to a knowing delight in the artifice of theatre, has a long genesis. “The 39 Steps” is direct offspring of the National Theatre of Brent when Barlow and Jim Broadbent thirty years ago did two-person versions of the Gospels and complete Shakespeare. Apart from the high-speed array of props, accessories and furniture “the 39 Steps” works via a basic contrast. The unvarying Hannay is chained later on to plucky Pamela, Joanna Simpkins in Mae West hair, with her useful uncle Bob high up in the Met- “Ah, Bob’s your uncle” inevitably. But these two are in utter contrast to the actors cast as Clown 1 and Clown 2. Samuel Davies and Robert Hopkins play all the other characters at speed. The roles- from spies to milkman to commercial travellers to newspaper vendor to station master are just a few- involve a bewildering change of costumes, moods and accents. (The Cardigan audience includes a poet of distinction who notes with approval the differentiation in accent between the Scots of lowland and highland.) When the fugitive pair reaches the McGarrigle hostelry their greeting is all kilts and tartan, cross-dressing and Highland reels. Happily for Pamela and Hannay the Bates Motel which comes lurking out of the moorland mist is fully booked. The comic demands placed on the Davies-Hopkins pair reaches a peak in the last scene at the London Palladium. The script necessitates the playing of two parts in the same scene by one actor. Frock-coated presenter becomes policeman Albright by the technique of draping a trench coat over one shoulder and the swift execution of a one hundred and eighty degree turn. Black Rat tours again in association with Blackwood Miners Institute and RCT Arts Services courtesy of ACW. A list of thanks takes in Caerphilly and Rhondda Cynon Taff Councils. Publicly funded theatre has no business treading territory where amateur companies can move competently enough. “The 39 Steps” is way beyond the capability of amateurs. It is technically demanding in the extreme, with the tightest of sound cues- the party at the house of Professor Jordan is an example. The challenges on actors are considerable as they juggle accents and have to make the sounds of steam engine and opening windows as well. Ayckbourn is a comic craftsman of unrivalled skill but his is comedy of situation. The timing required by actors in “39 Steps” is beyond that called for by Sir Alan. The big commercial tour of “the 39 Steps” played the New Theatre in February 2008. Richard Tunley’s twelve-venue tour- Pwllheli to Cwmbran- is as good- in fact, more athletic and exuberant. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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