Take a 1915 novel and a 1935 early Alfred Hitchcock film, The 39 Steps, and turn it into a Tony Award winning Broadway play. Then take the original story of a beautiful female spy and an unsuspecting Englishman drawn into an elaborate plot, but play it for laughs as a comedy thriller. Fill it with allusions and puns on the titles of other Hitchcock classics like North By Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window and Psycho.
Then turn all of that into a whirlwind adventure; use four actors to play a multitude of characters and you have the second production on the Mill Mountain Theater Trinkle Stage since Center in the Square came back to life. It’s The 39 Steps, which runs through this Sunday (October 13). There are shows every evening through Saturday at 7:30 pm with matinees on Saturday and Sunday.
Dustin Charles, one of the actors in The 39 Steps and also the dialect coach, has acted in this play elsewhere several times in the past. “Every role has its specific challenges. The nice thing in reviving a role…is coming in with the lines memorized and feeling comfortable about that. It gives you an ability to really play and try new things.” The Michigan native now makes New York City his home.
Hitchcock made The 39 Steps in England, before he came to Hollywood where his most well known movies were produced. “A lot of film critics consider it to be his best British-made film,” said Charles, who is also a self-described devotee of Hitch, “from a very young age.” (He liked Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Hitchcock in last year’s bio film but said it was historically inaccurate.)
With the play taking place in “so many different locations,” Charles gets to employ or coach others on several British accents (upper crust, Cockney, etc.), several versions of a Scottish accent – and even some German and Slavic.
The play’s director, Peppi Biddy, was also here previously to direct the first comeback production at the Trinkle after Center in the Square reopened, “The Marvelous Wonderettes.” Biddy teaches at the University of Mississippi for Women and has worked with Mill Mountain’s producing managing director, Ginger Poole, whom he brought in to teach at one point.
“The main character is on a journey to find out what The 39 Steps are – or is – depending on the way you interpret it,” said Biddy, who won’t give away too much of the plot. With four actors portraying over 100 characters (rehearsals took three weeks), Biddy told those who auditioned that if they were chosen, “you need to start getting on the Stairmaster. You’re either changing clothes or on stage or running to your next place.”
The 39 Steps movie was more of a melodrama, “but this was very much played for comedy,” said Charles, who first acted in the play for Biddy at the New Stage Theater in Jackson, Mississippi. The play spent several years on Broadway and then downsized to a smaller venue off-Broadway for another few years.
Up next after The 39 Steps at Mill Mountain in The Sound of Music in December, “a huge production,” said Poole, “but also a piece that I think Roanoke is hungry for. It’s one of those classic family productions around the holidays. It hasn’t been on the Mill Mountain stage in over 15 years.” Poole also said the 2014 season will be announced very soon. “We’re on the edge of it right now.”
“It’s a perfect opportunity for Roanoke audiences,” said Biddy, “because it’s a show that played in New York for 4-5 years…but is really more difficult than most could imagine to produce. This may be the only opportunity for people in Roanoke to see this really wonderful, funny piece.”
Go to millmountain.org for more on The 39 Steps and future events at Mill Mountain Theater.
By Gene Marrano
