The 39 Steps Cast and Creatives Interview

L-R Ryan Starling, Matthew Bird, Sophie Bloor and Cal McCrystal

One man on the run. Four actors. One hundred and thirty characters.

Derby Theatre and Hull Truck Theatre are busy preparing their new production of The 39 Steps, a comedic adaptation of the classic John Buchan novel and Alfred Hitchcock film.  East Midlands Theatre reviewer Matthew Bird visited their rehearsal space to talk to director Cal McCrystal and cast members Sophie Bloor and Ryan Starling.

Although the underlying story is one of adventure, McCrystal emphasised that the play is firmly and proudly a comedy through-and-through, saying, “the focus in this play is most definitely on the laughs, and we use the tension and the adventure and the story just as a vehicle to have lots of laughs along the way.”

A key contributor to the show’s humour is that the core cast of four actors are playing over 130 characters – sometimes playing multiple characters near simultaneously. Whilst Starling plays the lead Richard Hannay throughout, Bloor plays three different love interests and James Keningale and Kathryn Perkins both portray the remaining huge number of characters.

This is an aspect of the show Bloor clearly revels in. “Oh, it’s brilliant, especially as an actor. It’s a proper exercise in skill, memory, and versatility,” she enthused, noting the many accents she gets to play with. “It’s great finding a silhouette of each character.”

For Starling, he gets to enjoy the chaos of his fellow cast members’ rapidly changing roles whilst dealing with far fewer costume changes. “Hannay is definitely much more grounded: the real spine of the story,” he said. “It’s a different form of an exercise to me in that I just have to try and keep a lid on everything and not allow myself to get whisked up in the fun and the madness.”

McCrystal was keen to point out that although the core cast is four members, the cast is actually five members, with Tom Mitchell being involved both with set changes and some small parts but also as cover for all four of the cast, an impressive feat considering that means one actor needing to know over 130 characters!

Keningale and Perkins are both credited in the cast sheet as “clowns”, hinting at the form of comedy that the play draws inspiration from.

“I think there’s a clown at the centre of every good performance because a clown is just the most honest, vulnerable, optimistic part of the actor,” McCrystal said. “A clown loves the audience and wants to be loved in return, and that runs through all of this performance.”

McCrystal’s career is firmly rooted in comedy, having directed Cirque du Soleil clowns, provided comedy direction for the first two Paddington films, and worked on theatre hits such as One Man, Two Guvnors. Throughout our conversation, it was clear just how much reverence McCrystal holds for comedy.

“I think it’s the highest art form, to be honest,” he said. “The lovely thing about comedy is that the audience are an essential part of the show because it’s a call and response; because they’re almost the other member of the cast. You can’t do a comedy without an audience.”

“It’s just play, isn’t it? It’s just having fun.” Starling remarked, bouncing off McCrystal’s enthusiasm. “It is trying to recapture that childlike wonder and that childlike amusement.”

So what can audiences expect from this production of The 39 Steps?

“There’s lots of action scenes on trains and there’s murders,” McCrystal said of the story. “People will be laughing one second and screaming the next.”

For Hitchcock fans, ample references to both Hitchcock’s adaptation of the story and his other films have been added in this production, but despite that “we’re not being very loyal to Hitchcock in what we’re doing,” McCrystal said. “We’re more loyal to the Marx Brothers in this production.”

Ultimately, this is a play designed to be a lot of fun, start to finish. So whether or not you are a Hitchcock fan, or a lover of adventure stories, this show is sure to do one thing: make you laugh.

“These days we need a laugh,” Bloor remarked. “We need to take something serious and laugh at it, and I think that’s what we’re doing.”

The 39 Steps is playing at Derby Theatre 29 September to 17 October.