The laughs begin even before a San Francisco Playhouse manager takes the stage for the de rigueur curtain speech. Phil Wong, one of the Bay Area’s best comic actors, in a snappy suit and an ever-so-posh British accent, introduces himself as the other three actors in this terrific ensemble quickly assemble the few set pieces. The tenor of this goofy, slapstick parody establishes itself immediately.
“The 39 Steps” has a long history of adaptations: First it was a 1915 novel by John Buchan. Alfred Hitchcock adapted it for his 1935 spy thriller. Then in 1996 Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon turned it into an early version of what we are finally seeing today, Patrick Barlow’s rewrite, which premiered in 2005 and had a long run in the West End. With a lineage like that, you might expect it to be a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen mess, but instead it’s a sparkling, rapidly moving delight.
It’s a perfect match for San Francisco Playhouse. Director Susi Damilano showed her chops for antic spoofs—and for spot-on casting—most recently with last year’s “Clue.” Here, she’s in top form again, mining every moment for comic opportunities (spot-on sound design by Dan Alvaro Holland) that only works if you have an ensemble as adept as this one.
The plot hardly matters. In brief: It’s pre-war England. When, by chance, the entirely innocent Richard Hannay (Wong) finds himself wanted for murder—a mysterious and seductive woman in full film noir mode (played by Maggie Mason) is somehow stabbed to death in his apartment—he is off on a merry chase to avoid capture, find the true killer and discover the meaning of the woman’s oblique reference to “the 39 steps.”
In Barlow’s rendition of the story, the unfurling of the mystery is well beside the point; suffice it to say it’s about German spies.
The fun is in watching Wong, with his impeccable timing, navigate a series of quasi-romantic encounters with Mason as three different women: the glamorous, Marlene Dietrich-esque murder victim; the prim, virginal Pamela; and a mousy peasant controlled by a rage-aholic husband. Laundra Tyme’s wig design add to the humor, as do Alice Ruiz’s costumes.
Two wonderfully transformative clowns (Renee Rogoff and Greg Ayers) play multiple roles, interchangeably male and female: spies, music hall performers, Keystone-style cops and much more. They change characters by way of a wig, a hat, scrap of clothing, a dialect—even multiple times, and instantaneously, in the same scene.
Scenes set in Scotland to involve impenetrable accents, endless plaid, onstage bagpipes and a newsboy who, of course, dances a continual highland fling.
When windows are required, the characters grab a window frame and look—or climb, or jump—through it. Ominous spies carry their own lampposts to loiter under in shady corners as needed. Exaggerated death scenes somehow never get old.
In other words, everything is tickety-boo.
“The 39 Steps” runs through April 20 at San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St., San Francisco. Tickets are $15 to $125 at sfplayhouse.org or (415) 677-9596.