The 39 Steps

Director's note

The play The 39 Steps has three sources: from the adventure novel by John Buchan (1915) a cult British film was made in 1935 directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and Patrick Barlow created a stage adaptation of that film in 2005. Thus this theatrical piece interweaves different texts and poetics of a novelist, a cult director and a contemporary actor-comedian.

Buchan brought something new to the thriller genre — he placed an ordinary man at the center, a man who, under unusual circumstances, becomes embroiled in an incredible adventure in which he tries both to expose an international spy organization and to prove his innocence regarding a murder he did not commit. The brilliant director Hitchcock, famed for tense moments and thrilling plots, turned the adventure novel into a brilliant thriller. Many motifs recur throughout his films, and our production is full of quotations from famous Hitchcock films. Finally, Barlow’s adaptation enriched the original text with stage-effective humour, in the manner of comedies that enjoy great success in theatres in the West End and on Broadway.

What is specific to this production is that an impossible thing happens — the brilliant films of the master of suspense are presented by theatrical means. Here two principles that are so different — cinematic and theatrical — confront each other, but that is precisely the value and enormous richness of this play. To make things even more complicated, four actors play over 30 characters and, by imaginative devices and techniques, draw the audience into a fast and madcap game dominated by offbeat Monty Python-style humour.

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More about the event

More about the event: https://pozoristemladih.co.rs/predstave/dramska-scena-pozoriste-mladih?view=article&id=823:39-stepenika-1&catid=167