The 39 Steps :review:
The 39 Steps
Milwaukee Rep
January 29 2011
I'm not even sure where to begin in talking writing about this show. It was just awesome, and so very funny. It wasn't absolutely hilarious, but the whole thing was just overall… funny. The cast was fantastic, especially considering all that they had to do.
This play was partially based on, and partially spoofing the movie The 39 Steps by Alfred Hitchcock, as well as the book that the movie was based on.
I haven't seen the movie, but I read a brief summary: A man, falsely accused of murder, gets wrapped up in a mystery involving secret agents, spies, and top secret information. And as the advertising said, "an amazingly brilliant cast of four play over 140 characters in this fast paced comedic thriller."
The amazingly brilliant cast consisted of:
Reese Madigan as Richard Hannay, Helen Anker as Annabella Schmidt, Pamela and Margaret, and Gerard Neugent and John Pribyl as everyone else.
As far as the set goes, the only permanent piece of set were two balconies off to the side. The show has two scenes that take place in a theatre. As far as everything else, they brought out things that they needed, tables and chairs, and the ever useful crates. They had some rather funny props that they used at times, and it worked very well.
I wouldn't say that they broke the fourth wall completely in this show, but the cast all acknowledged the audience on several occasions. Sometimes, when someone would get frustrated with some sort of complicated maneuver, they would look to the audience and roll their eyes. Other times, when someone was proud of themselves, they'd sort of grin at the audience.
Reese Madigan played Richard Hannay, who was the lead. He was also the only actor to play the same character for the entire play. They did a nice job of showing his frustration with his situation as the play progressed by the simple matter of having his hair start out the show looking very neat and styled and then it got progressively messier as the show went along. I did actually think that he dealt with the whole situation rather well, all things considering. And also, he was cute. He had some fantastic moments, most of which tie into the use of the set and props. There will be more about that later.
Helen Anker was the only female in the cast, and she played three characters. First, she was Annabella Schmidt, secret agent. Annabella Schmidt had an impossible accent. It was very overly exaggerated Eastern European. As the play progressed, I figured out that it was probably meant to be German, but it was rather over the top, which made it funnier. They had a lot of fun with this, with Hannay either not being able to understand her, or him repeating her, and her insisting that he use the same accent. As such, they used a lot of words that would make her accent stand out.
She first encountered Hannay at the theatre, where she fired a gun into the air and created chaos. Hannay takes her home and she tells him all about how she is a secret agent, and that the bad guys are trying to smuggle a secret vital to national security out of the country, and only she can stop them. Unfortunately, she is murdered before she can carry out her mission, which leaves it up to Hannay. Her death scene was great, she came drifting out, all dramatically, and apologizing to Hannay for getting him involved. ("Inwulwed") Then she collapsed across a chair (that he was sitting in), a knife sticking out of her back.
To spoil the dramatic moment of the scene, Hanney had to wiggle his way out from under her, since she basically had him trapped. For the next several minutes, she was draped in what looked like a rather uncomfortable position over the chair, while Hanney tried to decide what to do. She was holding a map, which was folded many many times, and we had several sequences of Hanney unfolding it (it was as big as he was) and folding it up again. So now Hanney is wanted for murder.
Her next role was Margret, the wife of an old Scottish shepherd (farmer?)played by John Pribyl. Hanney mistook her for the old man's daughter at first. As a contrast to the refined looking Annabella, Margret looked worn out. It's amazing what a change of wig can do. Margret pretty clearly does not like her husband, or her life. She talked to Hanney for a bit about life in the big city, which she misses. She recognized Hanney as the man that the police are looking for, so the two of them were sending some "secret" signals, which her husband completely misinterpreted.
Again, she had a thick accent, but not as thick as her husband. As with before, they had a few bits where Hanney couldn't understand a word that they were saying, so sometimes she'd have to translate.
She and Hanney shared a passionate kiss before she helped him escape. She also gave Hanney her husband's coat, because his light colored suit, although fashionable, would show up too well in the dark moor.
The escape sequence was fun, the police were at the front door, and she told Hanney to go out the window - "No, not the front window - the REAR WINDOW!" and then they both paused and looked at the audience for effect. The "window" was a wooden frame that one or both of the actors would hold up. Hanney went "through" the window by means of Margret putting the frame over his head, and pulling it down over his body.
Finally, she also played Pamela, a proper English woman. Hanney first encountered her on the train. Without preamble, he kissed her deeply as the police passed by. Seeing only a young couple kissing, the detectives let them be for awhile. Hanney explained the situation to her afterwards, and asked for her help, but she wasn't impressed and turned him in.
Pamela then turned up later, in another funny scene which was one of my favorite scenes in the play. Hanney is on the run, and he runs into this convention hall. Apparently it is election time, and they mistake him for some sort of keynote speaker. John Pribyl played a very old man, I think he was the candidate. He had an ear phone so that he could hear, but apparently when he couldn't hear, he also didn't speak very loud. He shuffled his way up to the podium and started talking, he welcome everybody there, welcomed their guest (Hanney) and then continued to talk, silently, but with a lot of hand gestures, that got progressively sillier, before he finally turned the stage over to Hanney.
Hanney goes along with it, and gives a stirring and very generic speech about giving people second chances, and how it's important that everyone has a voice, and no one should ever have to live in fear. This moment was great, because in other scenes where there was an "audience", at the theatre at the beginning, and when the candidate was talking, they would play recordings of the audience reactions. Clapping, murmurs of agreement, cheers, and the like, but then suddenly, Hanney said something to the effect of "am I right?" and there was no sound. He turned to the real audience, "I said, am I right??" and it was our turn to clap.
Anyway, Pamela comes in while he is talking, recognizes him as the man who accosted her on the train, and turns him in. More about this later, but she ended up stuck with Hanney, quite literally. She came around eventually, and decided to help him clear his name.
The remaining two members of the cast, Gerard Neugent and John Pribyl were responsible for playing everyone else in the show. And they went through a lot of costume changes. Some of them were rather impressive.
First off, John Pribyl played Mr. Memory, an act on the music hall stage. His head is full of facts. His act consisted of people asking him questions, and then he would close his eyes and make funny sounds as he thought the question over, and then he would answer it. Gerard Neugent played the MC, who introduced Mr. Memory, was funny how he controlled the audience. They would be cheering, and then abruptly stop when he held up his hands.
After Hanney took Annabella home, she warned him that there were two spies out by the lamppost outside. Hanney cautiously looked out the window, and then the two guys came out in trench coats, carrying a lamppost. They set it up further downstage and then leaned on it. When Hanney turned his attention back to being inside, they left. A few minutes later, Hanney looked out the window again, and out they came with the lamppost. A bit later, Hanney started to look out the window, and out they came, but then he turned back inside. The two of them looked at each other, looked annoyed, and exited again.
After the murder, after a brief exchange with the milkman (Neugent), Hanney was off to take the train to Scotland to meet Annabella's contact. The dead body was discovered by the housekeeper, (Pribyl). A voice over, a police report, alerted the general public that Hanney was on the run, and that he might be escaping on the train. And then, in a fantastic moment, a toy train rolled across the stage, lit up and whistling. That's how we knew that the crates set up on the stage were part of a train.
Hanney got to share a carriage with two travelling underwear salesmen. They stopped at a station in Scotland, but not quite the station that Hanney wanted to stop at.
Then we had a scene that involved one of the salesmen, a newspaper boy, a police officer and a conductor. That is exactly twice as many characters as actors. They were shown to be different characters by wearing different hats. So there was a great sequence of switching hats and characters. They would switch hats on their own, as well as trading and helping each other. Things went on for awhile, getting progressively more chaotic until Hanney told them to knock it off.
I guess in the movie, there is a dramatic chase on the train. Hanney climbs up on top of the train, and then jumps off on a trestle and lands down in the moor below. That's a bit difficult to do on stage… or is it?
They actually pulled it off rather well. It did require some imagination, but I think that all theatre does. They stood on top of the crates, all of them were flapping their coats - one man lost his hat (he threw it off stage) because of the wind, and they'd move accordingly if the train went around a bend, or through a tunnel. The lights went down, and they moved some ladders into place, with… well the best word I have for it is monkey bars, spanning the gap between the ladders. Hanney hung from the bars for a moment, as the police tried to get at him from either ladder, and then, he let go and plunged down to the stage. Actually though, it was a fair distance, so it was pretty impressive. Even if it wasn't from a train trestle down to the moor, it was a full sized ladder down to the floor.
They played more with the windness on the moor. When Hanney was staying with Margret and her husband, whenever anyone would open the door, everyone would immediately start flapping their coats or skirts to show the wind. It was great.
Hanney made it to the big house, where Annabella's contact, Professor Jordan, lived. The house was represented by a large door with a big knocker. Hanney regarded it, struggled with the knocker for a moment, and then rang the doorbell. The door was answered by Mrs. Jordan (Pribyl). I really liked how Mrs. Jordan sort of floated around, she seemed to be a bit out of touch with things. She led Hanney around the stage and through the door several times. It's a big house. They were having a party, as shown by the shadow puppets dancing around on the wall. She told Hanney to wait in this other room, and he did so, but he kept opening the door and peeking out. Whenever he'd open the door, we'd see the shadow puppets, and hear music. It was funny when he'd open and close the door quickly.
The professor (Neugent) had a fun costume consisting of a bathrobe and a fez. He received Hanney and listened to him before revealing his grand secret: he's missing the top joint on the pinky finger of one of his hands. I liked how his accent would change, depending on what he was talking about. They never straight out said he was a nazi, but he was going on about the master race. He had as exaggerated of an accent as Annabella had. He almost told Hanney what the 39 steps (schetps) were, but instead, the professor shot him, and then the professor and his wife danced about happily.
And that's how the first act ended. It was a good time to put the break in, very dramatic.
The second act opened with Hanney telling the sheriff about how he survived, he had a hymn book in his coat pocket, and that stopped the bullet. The sheriff (Neugent) pretended to believe him, but then summoned a policeman (Pribyl) and they tried to arrest him. They tried to handcuff him, but Hanney ran off before they could get the cuffs on both wrists. His "escape" was awesome. He ran over to an "open window" and then turned the window around so he was on the other side of it. It was great.
While he was running, there was another police announcement that Hanney was being pursued by air. Pribyl came out dressed as a pilot, with a toy airplane on a pole. His copilot, a dummy, asked what direction they should head. "North by northwest!" The airplane crashed though, and the pilots had to bail out, and two toy parachute men came down from the ceiling.
Another fun set of roles that Pribyl and Neugent played were to secret agents detectives that Pamela alerted to come arrest Hanney. They asked Pamela to come along with them in their car. She asked "what car?" They looked at each other, and then frantically assembled a car out of four chairs, a podium, and a steering wheel that conveniently came flying in. When a flock of sheep blocked their way, one of the agents detectives, handcuffed Pamela to Hanney so that he couldn't run away. They didn't bank on Hanney stealing Pamela.
After being the agents detectives, the two actors made a quick costume change into… well… obstacles on the moor. Now chained together, Hanney and Pamela had to maneuver around the obstacles, which meant climbing over or around the guys. It was quite funny.
They ended up at a hotel, where the two innkeepers, husband and wife, played by… who else? They stood there dramatically for a moment as the theme from Psycho played. Neugent played the wife and Pribyl played the husband. They took turns with one of them having a really thick accent and the other one translating. They were stereotypical Scottish people, with the bright red hair and the tartan kilts. Hanney tells the innkeeper's wife that they are eloping, and pleads with her not to tell anyone that they are there. She willingly agrees.
There were lots of fun scenes at the hotel, but one of them involved an awesome costume change. The agents are at the front desk of the hotel, and one of them leaves to go check the rooms, or something. And then the innkeeper comes in. The agent asks him if he's seen a couple. The innkeeper offers to take the agent's coat, which he does. The agent removes his coat and hat and becomes the innkeeper's wife, who turns around and promptly scolds her husband for walking around in his pajamas. She tells him to put his coat on, or he'll catch his death, so he puts his coat on, and then the hat and becomes an agent. At which point, the innkeeper's wife tells him that there's no one there of interest, and she calls for her husband to throw the men out, which he does by means of exiting, taking his coat off, and coming back in. It was a really neat sequence, and I think it was my favorite quick change.
Being handcuffed together made things difficult for Hanney and Pamela - especially since Pamela really doesn't like him. They are soaking wet from running around on the moors in the rain, and once the two of them area in their hotel room, they are trying to get warmed up. I think that the hotel room actually had some elaborate set pieces. They had a fireplace and a bed that actually looked as such, not just crates doubling as a "bed". Anyway, Pamela decides to take off her soaking wet stockings, which was a funny sequence indeed. Since Hanney's hand was right by her, as she peeled her stockings off, Hanney was sort of stroking her leg. The two of them had great expressions, as Hanney looked like he was trying very hard not to look like he was enjoying this.
He told her two different stories about what was going on. The truth, with all of the spies and secret agents and such, and another made up story about his life of crime. I liked his tone of voice when he was telling her his "history". It was a bit sarcastic. Since Hanney has been on the run for at least two days, he's quite tired and falls asleep quickly, during which time Pamela manages to free herself from him. She's rather annoyed to discover that the "gun" he has been threatening her with was his pipe. She starts to leave, but upon leaving, sees the exchange between the agents and the innkeeper and she realizes that Hanney is telling the truth, so she goes back to him. He's sound asleep, and she curls up at the foot of the bed. At first she covered him with the blanket, but then she took it back for herself.
Hanney wakes up and is startled to discover that he's not tied to Pamela any more, and is equally startled to discover that she's still there. She tells him what she saw and heard, and that now she believes him. Things are going well, and the two of them almost kiss, but then he gets mad at her when she failed to remember everything that she heard, and that she doesn't want to be involved any more. So they fight and she storms off.
The final scene of the play takes place where the show started, back at the theatre. Mr. Memory is performing again. Hanney is in one box, and Pamela turns up. Professor Jordan is there as well. Or more accurately, a mannequin arm wearing his bathrobe, with the pink finger shorter than the others, holding his cigarette holder. After the MC left Mr. Memory alone onstage though, then the professor turned up for real.
Hanney rather dramatically climbed down from the stage and then asked Mr. Memory what the 39 Steps were. But before he can answer, the professor shoots him. So we have Pamela up in the one balcony, Mr. Memory collapsed on the stage, Hanney standing on the stage, and Professor Jordan in the other balcony. The professor waves the gun around a bit, taunting everyone, mostly Hanney.
And then, in a plot twist that I did not see coming, a hand came out of the curtains with a gun and shot the professor. Under the category of best last words, the professor staggers about, nearly falls out of the balcony, and gasps out mournfully, "I thought there were only four people in the cast." He ducked down, and then draped a dummy across the edge of the balcony. A few moments later, the MC came out and rushed to Mr. Memory's side.
Now actually, the show opened with Hanney in his flat, narrating the whole thing, and the story closed that way. But it was Christmas now, as demonstrated by a rather sad looking Christmas tree that came rolling out onto the stage. It's strongly implied that Hanney and Pamela got married, and the play ended with them looking out the window, while Neugent and Pribyl standing on ladders throwing handfuls of "snow" down behind the window.
This review ended up being pretty long, but this show deserved it, seeing as how it was awesome. It definitely ranks up there with one of the funnier plays that I have seen at the Rep.
Milwaukee Rep
January 29 2011
I'm not even sure where to begin in talking writing about this show. It was just awesome, and so very funny. It wasn't absolutely hilarious, but the whole thing was just overall… funny. The cast was fantastic, especially considering all that they had to do.
This play was partially based on, and partially spoofing the movie The 39 Steps by Alfred Hitchcock, as well as the book that the movie was based on.
I haven't seen the movie, but I read a brief summary: A man, falsely accused of murder, gets wrapped up in a mystery involving secret agents, spies, and top secret information. And as the advertising said, "an amazingly brilliant cast of four play over 140 characters in this fast paced comedic thriller."
The amazingly brilliant cast consisted of:
Reese Madigan as Richard Hannay, Helen Anker as Annabella Schmidt, Pamela and Margaret, and Gerard Neugent and John Pribyl as everyone else.
As far as the set goes, the only permanent piece of set were two balconies off to the side. The show has two scenes that take place in a theatre. As far as everything else, they brought out things that they needed, tables and chairs, and the ever useful crates. They had some rather funny props that they used at times, and it worked very well.
I wouldn't say that they broke the fourth wall completely in this show, but the cast all acknowledged the audience on several occasions. Sometimes, when someone would get frustrated with some sort of complicated maneuver, they would look to the audience and roll their eyes. Other times, when someone was proud of themselves, they'd sort of grin at the audience.
Reese Madigan played Richard Hannay, who was the lead. He was also the only actor to play the same character for the entire play. They did a nice job of showing his frustration with his situation as the play progressed by the simple matter of having his hair start out the show looking very neat and styled and then it got progressively messier as the show went along. I did actually think that he dealt with the whole situation rather well, all things considering. And also, he was cute. He had some fantastic moments, most of which tie into the use of the set and props. There will be more about that later.
Helen Anker was the only female in the cast, and she played three characters. First, she was Annabella Schmidt, secret agent. Annabella Schmidt had an impossible accent. It was very overly exaggerated Eastern European. As the play progressed, I figured out that it was probably meant to be German, but it was rather over the top, which made it funnier. They had a lot of fun with this, with Hannay either not being able to understand her, or him repeating her, and her insisting that he use the same accent. As such, they used a lot of words that would make her accent stand out.
She first encountered Hannay at the theatre, where she fired a gun into the air and created chaos. Hannay takes her home and she tells him all about how she is a secret agent, and that the bad guys are trying to smuggle a secret vital to national security out of the country, and only she can stop them. Unfortunately, she is murdered before she can carry out her mission, which leaves it up to Hannay. Her death scene was great, she came drifting out, all dramatically, and apologizing to Hannay for getting him involved. ("Inwulwed") Then she collapsed across a chair (that he was sitting in), a knife sticking out of her back.
To spoil the dramatic moment of the scene, Hanney had to wiggle his way out from under her, since she basically had him trapped. For the next several minutes, she was draped in what looked like a rather uncomfortable position over the chair, while Hanney tried to decide what to do. She was holding a map, which was folded many many times, and we had several sequences of Hanney unfolding it (it was as big as he was) and folding it up again. So now Hanney is wanted for murder.
Her next role was Margret, the wife of an old Scottish shepherd (farmer?)played by John Pribyl. Hanney mistook her for the old man's daughter at first. As a contrast to the refined looking Annabella, Margret looked worn out. It's amazing what a change of wig can do. Margret pretty clearly does not like her husband, or her life. She talked to Hanney for a bit about life in the big city, which she misses. She recognized Hanney as the man that the police are looking for, so the two of them were sending some "secret" signals, which her husband completely misinterpreted.
Again, she had a thick accent, but not as thick as her husband. As with before, they had a few bits where Hanney couldn't understand a word that they were saying, so sometimes she'd have to translate.
She and Hanney shared a passionate kiss before she helped him escape. She also gave Hanney her husband's coat, because his light colored suit, although fashionable, would show up too well in the dark moor.
The escape sequence was fun, the police were at the front door, and she told Hanney to go out the window - "No, not the front window - the REAR WINDOW!" and then they both paused and looked at the audience for effect. The "window" was a wooden frame that one or both of the actors would hold up. Hanney went "through" the window by means of Margret putting the frame over his head, and pulling it down over his body.
Finally, she also played Pamela, a proper English woman. Hanney first encountered her on the train. Without preamble, he kissed her deeply as the police passed by. Seeing only a young couple kissing, the detectives let them be for awhile. Hanney explained the situation to her afterwards, and asked for her help, but she wasn't impressed and turned him in.
Pamela then turned up later, in another funny scene which was one of my favorite scenes in the play. Hanney is on the run, and he runs into this convention hall. Apparently it is election time, and they mistake him for some sort of keynote speaker. John Pribyl played a very old man, I think he was the candidate. He had an ear phone so that he could hear, but apparently when he couldn't hear, he also didn't speak very loud. He shuffled his way up to the podium and started talking, he welcome everybody there, welcomed their guest (Hanney) and then continued to talk, silently, but with a lot of hand gestures, that got progressively sillier, before he finally turned the stage over to Hanney.
Hanney goes along with it, and gives a stirring and very generic speech about giving people second chances, and how it's important that everyone has a voice, and no one should ever have to live in fear. This moment was great, because in other scenes where there was an "audience", at the theatre at the beginning, and when the candidate was talking, they would play recordings of the audience reactions. Clapping, murmurs of agreement, cheers, and the like, but then suddenly, Hanney said something to the effect of "am I right?" and there was no sound. He turned to the real audience, "I said, am I right??" and it was our turn to clap.
Anyway, Pamela comes in while he is talking, recognizes him as the man who accosted her on the train, and turns him in. More about this later, but she ended up stuck with Hanney, quite literally. She came around eventually, and decided to help him clear his name.
The remaining two members of the cast, Gerard Neugent and John Pribyl were responsible for playing everyone else in the show. And they went through a lot of costume changes. Some of them were rather impressive.
First off, John Pribyl played Mr. Memory, an act on the music hall stage. His head is full of facts. His act consisted of people asking him questions, and then he would close his eyes and make funny sounds as he thought the question over, and then he would answer it. Gerard Neugent played the MC, who introduced Mr. Memory, was funny how he controlled the audience. They would be cheering, and then abruptly stop when he held up his hands.
After Hanney took Annabella home, she warned him that there were two spies out by the lamppost outside. Hanney cautiously looked out the window, and then the two guys came out in trench coats, carrying a lamppost. They set it up further downstage and then leaned on it. When Hanney turned his attention back to being inside, they left. A few minutes later, Hanney looked out the window again, and out they came with the lamppost. A bit later, Hanney started to look out the window, and out they came, but then he turned back inside. The two of them looked at each other, looked annoyed, and exited again.
After the murder, after a brief exchange with the milkman (Neugent), Hanney was off to take the train to Scotland to meet Annabella's contact. The dead body was discovered by the housekeeper, (Pribyl). A voice over, a police report, alerted the general public that Hanney was on the run, and that he might be escaping on the train. And then, in a fantastic moment, a toy train rolled across the stage, lit up and whistling. That's how we knew that the crates set up on the stage were part of a train.
Hanney got to share a carriage with two travelling underwear salesmen. They stopped at a station in Scotland, but not quite the station that Hanney wanted to stop at.
Then we had a scene that involved one of the salesmen, a newspaper boy, a police officer and a conductor. That is exactly twice as many characters as actors. They were shown to be different characters by wearing different hats. So there was a great sequence of switching hats and characters. They would switch hats on their own, as well as trading and helping each other. Things went on for awhile, getting progressively more chaotic until Hanney told them to knock it off.
I guess in the movie, there is a dramatic chase on the train. Hanney climbs up on top of the train, and then jumps off on a trestle and lands down in the moor below. That's a bit difficult to do on stage… or is it?
They actually pulled it off rather well. It did require some imagination, but I think that all theatre does. They stood on top of the crates, all of them were flapping their coats - one man lost his hat (he threw it off stage) because of the wind, and they'd move accordingly if the train went around a bend, or through a tunnel. The lights went down, and they moved some ladders into place, with… well the best word I have for it is monkey bars, spanning the gap between the ladders. Hanney hung from the bars for a moment, as the police tried to get at him from either ladder, and then, he let go and plunged down to the stage. Actually though, it was a fair distance, so it was pretty impressive. Even if it wasn't from a train trestle down to the moor, it was a full sized ladder down to the floor.
They played more with the windness on the moor. When Hanney was staying with Margret and her husband, whenever anyone would open the door, everyone would immediately start flapping their coats or skirts to show the wind. It was great.
Hanney made it to the big house, where Annabella's contact, Professor Jordan, lived. The house was represented by a large door with a big knocker. Hanney regarded it, struggled with the knocker for a moment, and then rang the doorbell. The door was answered by Mrs. Jordan (Pribyl). I really liked how Mrs. Jordan sort of floated around, she seemed to be a bit out of touch with things. She led Hanney around the stage and through the door several times. It's a big house. They were having a party, as shown by the shadow puppets dancing around on the wall. She told Hanney to wait in this other room, and he did so, but he kept opening the door and peeking out. Whenever he'd open the door, we'd see the shadow puppets, and hear music. It was funny when he'd open and close the door quickly.
The professor (Neugent) had a fun costume consisting of a bathrobe and a fez. He received Hanney and listened to him before revealing his grand secret: he's missing the top joint on the pinky finger of one of his hands. I liked how his accent would change, depending on what he was talking about. They never straight out said he was a nazi, but he was going on about the master race. He had as exaggerated of an accent as Annabella had. He almost told Hanney what the 39 steps (schetps) were, but instead, the professor shot him, and then the professor and his wife danced about happily.
And that's how the first act ended. It was a good time to put the break in, very dramatic.
The second act opened with Hanney telling the sheriff about how he survived, he had a hymn book in his coat pocket, and that stopped the bullet. The sheriff (Neugent) pretended to believe him, but then summoned a policeman (Pribyl) and they tried to arrest him. They tried to handcuff him, but Hanney ran off before they could get the cuffs on both wrists. His "escape" was awesome. He ran over to an "open window" and then turned the window around so he was on the other side of it. It was great.
While he was running, there was another police announcement that Hanney was being pursued by air. Pribyl came out dressed as a pilot, with a toy airplane on a pole. His copilot, a dummy, asked what direction they should head. "North by northwest!" The airplane crashed though, and the pilots had to bail out, and two toy parachute men came down from the ceiling.
Another fun set of roles that Pribyl and Neugent played were to secret agents detectives that Pamela alerted to come arrest Hanney. They asked Pamela to come along with them in their car. She asked "what car?" They looked at each other, and then frantically assembled a car out of four chairs, a podium, and a steering wheel that conveniently came flying in. When a flock of sheep blocked their way, one of the agents detectives, handcuffed Pamela to Hanney so that he couldn't run away. They didn't bank on Hanney stealing Pamela.
After being the agents detectives, the two actors made a quick costume change into… well… obstacles on the moor. Now chained together, Hanney and Pamela had to maneuver around the obstacles, which meant climbing over or around the guys. It was quite funny.
They ended up at a hotel, where the two innkeepers, husband and wife, played by… who else? They stood there dramatically for a moment as the theme from Psycho played. Neugent played the wife and Pribyl played the husband. They took turns with one of them having a really thick accent and the other one translating. They were stereotypical Scottish people, with the bright red hair and the tartan kilts. Hanney tells the innkeeper's wife that they are eloping, and pleads with her not to tell anyone that they are there. She willingly agrees.
There were lots of fun scenes at the hotel, but one of them involved an awesome costume change. The agents are at the front desk of the hotel, and one of them leaves to go check the rooms, or something. And then the innkeeper comes in. The agent asks him if he's seen a couple. The innkeeper offers to take the agent's coat, which he does. The agent removes his coat and hat and becomes the innkeeper's wife, who turns around and promptly scolds her husband for walking around in his pajamas. She tells him to put his coat on, or he'll catch his death, so he puts his coat on, and then the hat and becomes an agent. At which point, the innkeeper's wife tells him that there's no one there of interest, and she calls for her husband to throw the men out, which he does by means of exiting, taking his coat off, and coming back in. It was a really neat sequence, and I think it was my favorite quick change.
Being handcuffed together made things difficult for Hanney and Pamela - especially since Pamela really doesn't like him. They are soaking wet from running around on the moors in the rain, and once the two of them area in their hotel room, they are trying to get warmed up. I think that the hotel room actually had some elaborate set pieces. They had a fireplace and a bed that actually looked as such, not just crates doubling as a "bed". Anyway, Pamela decides to take off her soaking wet stockings, which was a funny sequence indeed. Since Hanney's hand was right by her, as she peeled her stockings off, Hanney was sort of stroking her leg. The two of them had great expressions, as Hanney looked like he was trying very hard not to look like he was enjoying this.
He told her two different stories about what was going on. The truth, with all of the spies and secret agents and such, and another made up story about his life of crime. I liked his tone of voice when he was telling her his "history". It was a bit sarcastic. Since Hanney has been on the run for at least two days, he's quite tired and falls asleep quickly, during which time Pamela manages to free herself from him. She's rather annoyed to discover that the "gun" he has been threatening her with was his pipe. She starts to leave, but upon leaving, sees the exchange between the agents and the innkeeper and she realizes that Hanney is telling the truth, so she goes back to him. He's sound asleep, and she curls up at the foot of the bed. At first she covered him with the blanket, but then she took it back for herself.
Hanney wakes up and is startled to discover that he's not tied to Pamela any more, and is equally startled to discover that she's still there. She tells him what she saw and heard, and that now she believes him. Things are going well, and the two of them almost kiss, but then he gets mad at her when she failed to remember everything that she heard, and that she doesn't want to be involved any more. So they fight and she storms off.
The final scene of the play takes place where the show started, back at the theatre. Mr. Memory is performing again. Hanney is in one box, and Pamela turns up. Professor Jordan is there as well. Or more accurately, a mannequin arm wearing his bathrobe, with the pink finger shorter than the others, holding his cigarette holder. After the MC left Mr. Memory alone onstage though, then the professor turned up for real.
Hanney rather dramatically climbed down from the stage and then asked Mr. Memory what the 39 Steps were. But before he can answer, the professor shoots him. So we have Pamela up in the one balcony, Mr. Memory collapsed on the stage, Hanney standing on the stage, and Professor Jordan in the other balcony. The professor waves the gun around a bit, taunting everyone, mostly Hanney.
And then, in a plot twist that I did not see coming, a hand came out of the curtains with a gun and shot the professor. Under the category of best last words, the professor staggers about, nearly falls out of the balcony, and gasps out mournfully, "I thought there were only four people in the cast." He ducked down, and then draped a dummy across the edge of the balcony. A few moments later, the MC came out and rushed to Mr. Memory's side.
Now actually, the show opened with Hanney in his flat, narrating the whole thing, and the story closed that way. But it was Christmas now, as demonstrated by a rather sad looking Christmas tree that came rolling out onto the stage. It's strongly implied that Hanney and Pamela got married, and the play ended with them looking out the window, while Neugent and Pribyl standing on ladders throwing handfuls of "snow" down behind the window.
This review ended up being pretty long, but this show deserved it, seeing as how it was awesome. It definitely ranks up there with one of the funnier plays that I have seen at the Rep.