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The 39 Steps

Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Four stars 

 

John Buchan probably couldn’t have predicted the liberties  maverick film director Alfred Hitchcock would take with his 1915 novel, in which dashing Richard Hannay takes flight to Scotland after a night at the theatre throws him into a world of intrigue and adventure. Hitchcock too might have raised an eyebrow regarding how writer Patrick Garland transformed his 1935 big screen adaptation into a pocket sized stage pastiche requiring just four actors to do the business. 

 

Garland’s irreverent hybrid of Hitchcock and Buchan’s creations has run and run for two decades now and counting. Ben Occhipinti’s new Pitlochry Festival Theatre production breathes fresh life into a show that has tremendous fun with the existing material while managing to put a personal stamp on things. 

 

This is led by Alexander Service as Hannay, who flaunts his character’s matinee idol looks with a nice line in self parody as he flees from his bachelor pad that has just acquired a murdered German fugitive as part of the furniture. The panoply of skullduggery and accidental romance that follows sees Blythe Jandoo too play assorted leading ladies with similar lashings of style, charm and comic strip satire aplenty. This is especially the case with Pamela, who ends up in an involuntary clinch with Hannay on the train to Scotland in order to help throw the cops off the scent, then later spends the night with him in handcuffs. 

 

Chris Coxon and Stephanie Cremona keep things rattling along as the show’s self styled Clowns, changing hats, coats and accents in rapid fire succession as assorted pulp fiction spies, Highland hoteliers and the Mr Memory vaudeville turn that sets things in motion. 

 

All this takes place on Liz Cooke’s sliding doors set featuring a mini revolve and a track that allows miniature trains and Highland sheep alike to speed their way home. The end result sees a Freudian dream team forever in motion in a period parody run riot.


The Herald, July 18th 2025

 

ends

 

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