FOUR STARS

Passing through the village of Elsfield, you might hear vague stirrings in the churchyard. This will be John Buchan, formerly of Elsfield Manor, turning in his grave over the transformation of his most famous thriller, The 39 Steps, into a knockabout comedy. Patrick Barlow’s reworking of the 1915 novel, which incorporates most of the very different plot of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film version, delighted Oxford audiences within weeks of its creation eight years ago. It later went on to success in the West End, on Broadway and in nearly 30 countries across the world.

This week it is back in Oxford, playing to packed houses who cheer and applaud the invention, wit and relentless pace of the piece (director Maria Aitken). Despite my earlier comment, it is hard to imagine that Buchan would not have been delighted too, even though little of his original survives.

Hero Richard Hannay, on the run for a murder he did not commit, is not Buchan’s bluff former mining engineer but the suave sophisticate of Hitchcock’s invention, with his Portland Place flat and a taste for expensive tweeds. As played by Richard Ede, though, he is younger and more laddish than the brooding figure presented by Robert Donat in the film. That he’s just as much an athlete is demonstrated throughout the 90-minute show in exploits that include, for instance, his escape from a train crossing a Forth Bridge constructed from decorators’ ladders.

High-speed costume changes are the forte of both Tony Bell and Gary Mackay, a well-drilled alumnus of the Oxford School of Drama. Between them they play more than 20 characters, including the remarkable Mr Memory and his stage assistant, the principal villain (a sinister Nazi), and a dour boarding house owner and his good-sort missus, one of a number of excellent comic turns for Mackay in drag.

Charlotte Peters, meanwhile, makes a fine job of both the femme fatale spy whose murder in Hannay’s flat sets the plot in motion and the gorgeous society lady who finds herself handcuffed to the adventurer. That they seem always on the point of ‘that first kiss’ becomes an amusing running joke.

The trainspotter in me compels me to note an error in the poster, with a Gresley A3 Pacific carrying smoke deflectors not added till 1960. Sad I know . . .

 

Until Saturday, box office 01865 305305, oxfordplayhouse.com