By DANIEL SHOCK
A Seat on the Aisle
I was hesitant to take the ASOTA assignment to review The 39 Steps at IRT because I had just reviewed a production by the Hyperion Players six months and four days ago. But then I thought – what an interesting opportunity to compare an excellent community theatre production to the excellence of IRT’s professional staging. So, I raised my hand and said I would do it.
For the unfamiliar, The 39 Steps is based on – and parodies – the Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name. It tells the story of a man, Richard Hannay, who attends a vaudevillian-style performance of a mnemonist, or memory expert. A shot is fired in the theatre and, in the rush to get out, Hannay becomes entangled with a woman who asks to come to his flat. Hannay agrees and discovers that she is a spy on the run from men who want to kill her. She sleeps in his bedroom while he takes a chair in another room. In the early morning, she stumbles in and collapses in his lap – revealing a knife in her back. Frightened for his life and afraid of being framed for murder, Hannay goes on the run. He makes his way through Scotland and back, running into people eager either to help him or to turn him in for the reward. It’s a fun spy story. The play spoofs these elements by framing the tale as a deliberately sloppy theatre production – with shades of The Play That Goes Wrong.
(From left) Jürgen Hooper, Michael Stewart Allen, and Ema Zivkovic with Tyler Meredith. (Photo by Zach Rosing)
IRT’s production leans into the gleeful absurdity. Jürgen Hooper makes a fine leading man as Hannay, all mustache and stiff-upper-lip charm, grounding the show in just enough earnestness. Tyler Meredith juggles Annabella, Margaret, and Pamela with dexterity – slipping accents, costumes, and perspectives on and off like gloves. But the true comic firepower comes from Michael Stewart Allen and Ema Zivkovic as the two “clowns,” who together play every other character: spies, salesmen, innkeepers, policemen, you name it. Their frantic quick changes, outrageous accents, and sheer physical stamina are a comic tour de force.
The design work is sharp and witty. Linda Buchanan’s set turns the stage into a kind of theatrical playground: brick walls, box seats, and ladders anchor the space, while steamer trunks double as both storage for props and flexible set pieces. Movable doors and window frames roll in and out to conjure new spaces, and partial fences help place us convincingly outdoors. Linda Pisano’s costumes strike the right period tone while also enabling lightning-fast transformations. Xiangfu Xiao’s lighting and UptownWorks’ sound design add cinematic flair, punctuating the action with bold shifts in mood. The underscoring – whether drawn from Hitchcock’s films or smartly crafted in his style – feels perfectly at home: playful, suspenseful, and just a little cheeky.
So how does it compare to Hyperion’s production from earlier this year? IRT’s version is undoubtedly more polished – the design is sleeker, the technical work more precise. But Hyperion’s approach, played just a bit straighter, landed the comedy harder for me. Their performers weren’t winking at the audience so much as simply existing in absurd circumstances, which made the laughs feel sharper. IRT’s version, under Benjamin Hanna’s direction, leans toward the melodramatic, heightening the cartoonishness in a way that, at times, tips into self-awareness. It’s a matter of taste, but I tend to think comedy hits hardest when the characters themselves don’t know they’re in a comedy.
None of that is to say IRT’s The 39 Steps isn’t worth your time. Quite the opposite: if you enjoy theatrical inventiveness, Hitchcock send-ups, or just want to laugh for two hours, this production delivers. It’s a fizzy cocktail of parody, mystery, and slapstick, stirred with professional precision.
The 39 Steps runs until Oct. 12 at Indiana Repertory Theatre’s OneAmerica Financial Stage. For tickets and information, visit irtlive.com.
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