“The 39 Steps,” March 10 through 13

Thursday, March 10, through Sunday, March 13

Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center, 3750 Seventh Avenue, Rock Island IL

Winner of two 2008 Tony Awards and the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy of 2007, author Patrick Barlow's slapstick thriller The 39 Steps enjoys a March 10 through 13 run at Rock Island's Augustana College, the show's creative team and its four-person cast sure to demonstrate why the New York Times called this Alfred Hitchcock celebration/spoof an “indomitably funny” comedy of “virtuosic clowning.”

Based on John Buchan's 1915 novel that was adapted into Hitchcock's 1935 film classic, The 39 Steps opens with mild-mannered Richard Hannay at a London theatre when a fight breaks out and a shot is fired. In the ensuing panic, he finds himself holding a frightened Annabella Schmidt, who talks him into taking her back to his flat. There, she tells him that she is a spy being chased by assassins out to kill her. She also claims to have uncovered a plot to steal vital British military secrets, implemented by a man who is the head of the espionage organization “The 39 Steps.” The next day, however, Hannay wakes up to find the woman dead, and what follows, in Barlow's imagining, is pure slapstick hilarity in which the entirety of Hitchcock's movie is performed by a whirlwind cast of four. Boasting an on-stage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers, and good-old-fashioned romance, The 39 Steps' serious spy story is played mainly for laughs in Barlow's theatrical adaptation, with his script full of allusions to (and puns on the titles of) other Alfred Hitchcock films including Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Psycho, Vertigo, and North by Northwest.

Directing The 39 Steps for Augustana is professor of theatre arts Jeff Coussens, who helmed such recent collegiate productions as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Madwoman of Chaillot, and The Three Musketeers, and whose other directorial credits in the area have included Genesius Guild's The Tempest and the Mississippi Bend Players' Wait Until Dark. Beleaguered protagonist Richard Hannay is portrayed by Will Crouch (One Flea Spare), with dozens of additional characters enacted by the trio of Sarah Walton, Aiden Lenehan, and Reader theatre reviewer Roger Pavey Jr., who also serves as scenic charge. And with Trinity Filut performing The 39 Steps' stage-manager duties, other members of the show's creative team include assistant stage manager Stephanie White, lighting/sound designer and technical director Mike Turczynski, assistant lighting designer Riley Scranton, costume designer Emily Bushá, scenic designer Cameron Strandin, board operator Julianna Byrne, and run crew Aniyah Davis and Paige Withey.

The 39 Steps will be staged in Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center March 10 through 13, admission is $5-15, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)794-7306 and visiting Augustana.edu/tickets.