The 39 Steps is a melodrama adapted from
the 1915 novel by John Buchan. Patrick
Barlow rewrote this adaptation in 2005 and it
has been running with great success in both
London and New York since.
The play’s concept calls for the entirety of
the 1935 adventure film The 39 Steps to be
performed with a cast of only four. One actor
plays the hero, Richard Hannay, an actress
plays the three women with whom he has
romantic entanglements, but we adapted
this and used two women instead of one. Two
other actors play every other character in the
show: heroes, villains, men, women, children
and even the occasional inanimate object.
This often requires lightning fast quick-changes and occasionally for them to play multiple
characters at once. Mr Walton, our director,
also developed minor roles for six younger
actors.
We all had tremendous fun performing this
play as it was nothing like we had ever done
before. Sam McKeever was an excellent
Richard Hannay with an English accent and
pencil Mustache. James Rickman and Liam
Reeves played multiple characters, keeping
the audience on their toes, and they both
ended up cross dressing. Brie-Anna Keatley
was brilliant in the role as Pamela who has
a love hate relationship with the main character, Hannay. I played Annabella Schmidt,
a seductive spy, and Margaret - a Scottish
innkeeper.
It was very challenging to execute this play
but I can honestly say we were all very proud
of the outcome.
Alice Guerin