Play Review: ‘The 39 Steps’ at Teatro Live

The 39 Steps is a theatrical adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s film by the same name. It’s a thriller, spy mystery, but more than anything, it’s hilarious. Teatro Live’s rendition of this adaption, directed by Farren Timoteo, had the audience laughing almost non-stop. And the performances by the cast were spectacular.

The play follows Richard Hanney (Geoffrey Simon Brown) as he gets caught up in a race to stop foreign agents from committing espionage. He soon becomes the main suspect for a murder and goes on a wild goose chase to clear his name and prevent a war.

The cast members truly blew my mind. Michael Watt and Katie Yoner played who knows how many characters in the play. They went from foreign agents to hotel keepers to jugglers so fluidly and masterfully it made my head spin. But above all, they were hilarious. The pair took on their dizzy amounts of roles and brought out the funniest part in each.

They also deserve some credit for the quick changes of their costumes. With the help of wigs, hats, mustaches, and many sets of clothing, they jumped from character to character. And even when the stick of Yoner’s mustache failed, she made it part of the joke to toss it off.

Priya Narine also took on multiple characters, playing mostly the various attractive women throughout the play. She managed to switch between a prowling spy to an irritable — but attractive — woman on a train to the poor wife of an old man. 

Brown is brilliant as Hanney, and his accent was perfectly outrageous. And though he was the only cast member with one character to play, he did it well.

The physicality of the cast’s performances truly took the play to a whole new level. It made the hilarity of the play’s events and the characters’ interactions even more funny somehow. Their performances made for an incredibly dynamic play.

The cast was also responsible for moving the set pieces around to take the audience from scene to scene. This isn’t necessarily unusual for a play, but they didn’t do it in darkness. The cast moved the pieces around as part of the story and part of their performances. It not only transformed the stage into a hundred different scenes but added to the story.

They also served as the special effects department at various times throughout the play. Brown flapped his own coat in the wind of his train escape, with the occasional help of Watt. Watt and Yoner also added in sound effects, most comically the yammering on the other end of a phone line. It was all done incredibly well and had the audience cackling. 

But credit still must be given to the crew, the lighting was on point and the non-human made sound effects didn’t miss a beat.

It’d be an understatement to say that The 39 Steps was a hoot and a holler. It had me on the edge of my seat, not so much for the suspense but from laughing so hard. This is a production you do not want to miss out on.

The 39 Steps runs at the Varscona Theatre until November 30.