All Buffoonery, Double Entendres And Farce

Shakespeare & Company’s new fall production is “The 39 Steps,” a huge hit on Broadway and now a favorite of theater companies across the country. When Alfred Hitchcock made his film of “Steps” in 1935, he stayed close to John Buchan’s 1915 novel, a noir tale of espionage and the effort to steal British plans for a new aircraft engine. Various productions for the screen followed. Then in 2005, along came Patrick Barlow, who reworked the plot as a farce in which all characters — and there are many — are played by only four actors. Well, three really, since one actor plays the protagonist, Richard Hannay, throughout. While a thin thread of the original story remains, Barlow’s “Steps” is all buffoonery, double entendres and references to several of Hitchcock’s most famous films. Lightening quick costume changes, ridiculous accents and sex reversals are the order of the day as the three actors take up and drop characters like hot potatoes, don and discard wigs, pantomime a chase atop a moving train or die with comic gusto. Such fun, you say. Well, yes, for a while. Then the conceit begins to wear thin, and you are watching talented actors race from role to role in what has become a silly play without the redeeming charm and absurdity of great farce. Happily, the performances from four of the company’s best trained and most flexible actors are delightful enough to make much of the evening pleasant if not memorable. Jason Asprey, suave and a bit self-pitying as Richard Hannay, a single Englishman of plummy accent and limited social life, goes to the theater one evening to see Mr. Memory, a mnemonist, and is suddenly drawn into the web woven by the sinister 39 Steps gang. He is rushed to his apartment by Annabella Schmidt — played by the veteran Elizabeth Aspenlieder in one of her three roles — who is soon murdered. Of course Hannay is suspected of the crime, but he escapes, determined to find the real murderer. Aspenlieder later becomes a hilarious Scottish farm wife, Margaret McTyte, and a blonde beauty who captivates — literally in the second act — Hannay. Each role gives the actor license to use her skills at accent and physical comedy. (Her death throes in the first act are nearly unending.) All of the dozens of other characters are played with gusto, energy and comedic commitment by David Joseph and Josh Aaron McCabe. Joseph is best as the turbaned Mr. Mystery, with false teeth and large eyeglasses spouting his lines in a funny, if politically incorrect, Anglo-Indian accent. His female characters are well done, too, helped by his large, dark eyes. McCabe is best of all, perhaps. His turns as the villain, Professor Jordan, with his white cat — a marvelously manipulated hand puppet — are the funniest in the play. Jonathan Croy, the company’s man of comedy, has both directed and created the minimal scenery and props for “Steps.” His clever use of steamer trunks is a delight, especially when they become railway cars for the chase atop the speeding train. But even he can make little out of a long, tedious scene between Hannay and two traveling lingerie salesmen or of a mostly incomprehensible election rally in Scotland. Part of the problem — at least for me — is that “Steps” plays in the intimate, stepped-seats-on-three-sides Bernstein Theatre. The actors come and go through openings in heavy black drapes, and many of their wig and costume changes occur in front of our eyes or barely out of sight. Performance on a proscenium stage would help conceal the surprises. “The 39 Steps” runs at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA, through Nov. 4. For tickets call 413-637-3353 or go to www.shakespeare.org.