Weekend Play - The 39 Steps

This past weekend was the weekend of entertainment. I took my mom and grandma to see The 39 Steps at the Ahmanson for Mother’s Day. I knew that it was an Alfred Hitchcock movie, but I had no idea what the play was about. At first, I thought it was a musical, but then my mom told me it was a straight comedy. Straight plays can sometimes be boring. This play was so freaking funny and so well done. Everything was so cleverly done. It’s one of those plays that you have to see to believe. I could never sit here and describe it to you and have you fully understand the awesomeness. The writing was just amazing and the director, who is a female by the way, brought it out so well. Some directors can kill the funny so easily, but she embraced it. The writer had so many Hitchcock references and you didn’t even need to know Hitchcock movies well to understand. Utterly clever.

There was one scene where the main character was trying to escape the police while riding on a train. He jumps out the window and then runs on the top of the train. To represent the wind, he shakes his jacket behind him and it was just amazing. There were only 4 members of the cast and each played a number of parts, except for the main character. He played himself the entire play. All said and done, there were about 100 characters and these 3 actors played all of them. They would wear a different hat or half of a coat and turn to the side to represent each character. Ugh, did I mention how well this play was done? It closes on Sunday, but I would see this play again if it ever comes back. I never heard of it before this and I wish I had. There are way too many bad shows out there and this one definitely made up for it.