Photo by Brett Beiner
Never see a comedy at a Sunday matinee. For whatever reason, audiences are sleepier and far less animated during these shows. For dramas or musicals, it doesn’t really matter that much as they are less dependent upon audience response, but comedies need laughter or they might as well not exist.
This is to say that I am not sure I can trust my own opinion of Drury Lane Theater’s production of The 39 Steps, a part farce, part mystery refurbishing of the book that inspired the Hitchcock film of the same name. It is clear from the opening moment that this show wants to elicit laughter, but at the matinee I attended it was also clear that the audience was not interested in participating, especially in the first act.
Is that the fault of the script? The half-filled auditorium? The pacing? Or the audience’s own complacent Sunday afternoon attitude that refused to allow the kind of full immersion a show like this needs to work. Because laughter is a contagious thing—try not laughing when everyone else is and you’ll know it’s true—audience response is especially needed when a director and actors have worked very hard to produce the kind of controlled silliness that makes this kind of show work.
And there is no doubt that a lot of hard work went into this production. The timing is spectacular and the show is rife with both visual and spoken humor. The actors—Gavin Lee as Richard Hannay, the kind of unsuspecting man who usually finds himself at the center of a noir such as this one; Caitlin Gallogly as several different women with whom he comes into contact including, of course, the femme fatale who starts the trouble; and Zudhi Boueri and Tom Detrinis as “clowns” playing all of the other male characters from Hannay’s household staff to insane scientists to politicians to policemen to…well, whoever is needed—hold nothing back. They are all up for everything from the silliest humor to the amped-up “danger” that Hannay finds himself in after being framed for a murder.
Director Johanna McKenzie Miller puts them through their paces, to be sure. The script even features numerous places where a clown, through a rapid costume switch like changing a hat, shifts between characters on the fly, even if it means having a conversation with someone else they are playing. (It gets more elaborate than hats, too, thanks to Rachel Boylan’s costume design.) And it all moves along so smoothly that the only thing one can do is admire the comical presentation and wait to discover the next one. Miller’s cleverly convoluted blocking is made even more fun through the efforts of set designer Angela Weber Miller, whose seemingly simple interior mansion set proves anything but and allows for seamless location changes throughout the play. In addition to this, we are whisked from place to place with the help of Ray Nardelli’s sound design, Anthony Churchill’s excellent projections, and Ray Fiskness’s lighting, along with some very clever properties designed by Cassy Schillo.
But it is the actors who make it all work, and it was rather disconcerting to watch them doing so much so well with so little audience reaction. Granted, the second act elicited more laughter, though even then it was restrained. I found myself wondering why—I mean, I was not guffawing at the top of my lungs either even though I was immersed in the lunacy I was watching, enjoying all of the elements that comprised it, including the occasional comic reference to other Hitchcock works—and I think it ultimately comes back, in all likelihood, to that Sunday matinée thing. I heard many audience members praise the show in the lobby afterward: they liked the show even if they did so more or less silently…as did I.
The 39 Steps is playing at Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, until Aug 13. Tickets are available at drurylanetheatre.com.For more Chicago reviews or show information, see chicagoonstage.com or theatreinchicago.com.