The 39 Steps

(Criterion Theatre, 15 May 2009)

Wit is in expressing more with less. A metaphor is in painting a picture in a phrase. A joke is in evoking an alternative story-line in a sentence. A formula is in encoding infinite content in a finite collection of symbols.

By shedding the superfluous, with four actors and minimal props, the play expresses the essence of the human mind's escape from boredom. Richard Hannay (Robert Portal), is of singular and, fortunately and yet inevitably, handsome constitution. All women are of the same essence (Tessa Churchard) and only vary in form; hence, Mr Hannay is wise just to wait for the right form to arrive. Other men are at most of two types (these types are sometimes carelessly borrowed by women)---slim or fat---and hence are portrayed by at most two actors (Nigel Betts and Alan Perrin). Suspense, romance, class, a little humour, and music successfully plot an escape from Mr Hannay's boredom, which is nothing but the absence of a structured thought, the absence that, if left unattended, spirals into despair.