BWW Reviews: THE 39 STEPS from Tennessee Repertory Theatre

There is an embarrassment of riches on display in Tennessee Repertory Theatre's production of The 39 Steps - not the least of which is the cumulative effort of four of Nashville's finest actors showing off everything in their estimable bag of tricks to bring this enormously entertaining play to life. Add to those efforts another stunning set by Gary Hoff, TrisH Clark's period-perfect costumes, Michael Barnett's gorgeous lighting and Paul Carrol Binkley's stellar sound design and you clearly have one of the season's most successful offerings, technically and artistically delivered.

Under the direction of the always dependable yet amazing Rene Dunshee Copeland - who, it seems, never fails to deliver, and whose artistic vision is always sharply focused and in tune with what local audiences want to see - aided and abetted by the offstage crew headed by stage manager David Wilkerson, The 39 Steps moves along at a breakneck pace, delivering laughs and demonstrating just how much fun live theater can be. This is how Britsh farce should be done, with imagination and enthusiasm.

A hit on Broadway and in the West End, The 39 Steps is Patrick Barlow's adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film (based on an adventure novel by John Buchan), a crisply written take-off on the Hitchcockian genre that is respectful of its origins without necessarily be slavish to them. Staged essentially as a farce - four actors portray all of the film's characters amid a flurry of quick changes and even quicker repartee - with some rollicking good natured fun in the mix, The 39 Steps clearly honors the Hitchcock film cannon it satirizes, with clever asides paying homage to such films as Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest, Rear Window, The Birds and The Man Who Knew Too Much. The play is presented with all manner of Monty Pythonesque humor, spotlighting broadly drawn characters amid the most humorous of situations.

To Copeland's good fortune, she's found the four Nashville actors most likely to bring The 39 Steps to life with style, panache and skill; in fact, we can't imagine anyone outside of these four who so adroitly could pull all this murder and mayhem off with such gleeful zeal.

Nate Eppler makes his Tennessee Rep debut as the play's hero, Richard Hannay, who through a series of events becomes ensnared in a trans-U.K. manhunt and the machinations of a cadre of international spies aka The 39 Steps. Along the way, Hannay finds himself in various romantic entanglements involving a quasi-European secret agent named Annabella Schmidt, the much-younger wife (Margaret) of an old Scottish farmer and a lissome British lass (Pamela) he meets as "strangers on a train" and later bumps into at a political rally. Martha Wilkinson, without doubt the most accomplished of Nashville actresses, plays all of the women.

The scene in which Eppler wriggles out from under Wilkinson's prone figure is beautifully staged by Copeland and wonderfully acted by the pair, showing their tremendous focus and utter control of the onstage situation. That scene alone may well be worth the price of a ticket.

In the meantime, all the other habitues of Hitchcock's original spy drama (so effectively set in the years between the Great War and the beginning of World War II) are played by the mesmerizingly consistent and confident pair of Patrick Waller and Peter Vann, who deliver a bevy of believable and fully realized characters to the stage in a pair of performances that are as impressive as any you're likely to see anywhere.

Eppler, oozing his trademark charm (this isn't his first time at a farcical British rodeo, as it were), dashing demeanor and unerring timing, plays the Canadian Richard (who's rather a roue) with a certain amount of smarminess and matinee idol facetiousness. Drolly delivering his lines with ease, Eppler's Richard is infinitely disarming, providing a wink and a nod here and there to let the audience know that he gets the joke - while somehow remaining thoroughly immersed in the dramatic overtones of the piece.

Displaying her own innate timing, while providing a textbook example of how British farce should be played to get the biggest laugh from the audience, Wilkinson tiptoes along a dangerously perilous edge - and she does so beautifully. She refuses to go over the top, yet manages to wring every single bit of comedy from her trio of characters. Wilkinson trusts her audience enough to give them what they want and what they expect; yet perhaps more importantly, she trusts herself enough to translate the script believably without even a trace of artifice or over-acting.

Vann and Waller, billed as Clown 1 and Clown 2, give remarkably controlled performances while moving quickly in-and-out of all manner of disparate characters and situations. The amount of work and responsibility foisted upon the worthy shoulders of these two is staggering and they prove themselves worthy of the challenge - equal to the demands of Barlow's wonderfully crafted script and Copeland's superb direction.

Hoff's set, which transforms the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Johnson Theater into a proscenium theater in London, circa the mid-1930s, is gorgeously appointed and terrifically rendered. Hoff's Art Deco meets Beaux Arts design aesthetic, features a beautiful deep-red show curtain with gold bouillon fringe, with draped balconies and the evocations of a steam engine on either side.

TrisH Clark's sumptuously designed costumes clad the characters in the fashions of the time period and features some of her best work to date. Particularly stunning is Wilkinson's costume as Annabella Schmidt: a smart black evening suit that features fur cuffs and a chapeau featuring a collection of long black feathers that adds to Annabella's mysterious nature (and helps create some nice comic bits). And special attention must be paid to the impeccable tailoring of Clark's costumes: they fit each individual perfectly (one of my pet peeves in regard to costuming is how infrequently they are actually tailored to fit the actors who wear them, as if one-size-fits-all works so long as they are of the proper period) and the actors wear shoes that are appropriate to their costumes (Annabella's black pumps and Pamela's spectators are fashionable and timely).

Barnett's lighting is ideal for the onstage happenings, directing the audience attention when need be and illuminating the moments prescribed by the script. Binkley's sound design (which includes delightful pre-show and interval scoring) is pitch-perfect. Stage manager Wilkerson and his offstage/backstage crew deliver yeoman service to the production, ensuring its enormous success and overall grand effect.

- The 39 Steps. Adapted by Patrick Barlow from the novel by John Buchan, from the movie of Alfred Hitchcock. Directed by Rene Dunshee Copeland. Presented by Tennessee Repertory Theatre, at TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theater, through April 2. For details, visit the company website at www.tennesseerep.org. For ticket information, call (615) 782-4040.

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