The 39 Steps (play)

The 39 Steps
Written by	Patrick Barlow
Based on	The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan The 39 Steps (1935 film) by Alfred Hitchcock
Date premiered	3 May 1996 (1996-05-03) 17 June 2005 (2005-06-17)
Place premiered	Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, North Yorkshire West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
Original language	English
Genre	Comedy/parody
Setting	1930s England and Scotland
[Official home page of the play at the Wayback Machine (archived 2018-09-01) Official site]

The 39 Steps is a parody play adapted from the 1915 novel by John Buchan and the 1935 film by Alfred Hitchcock. The original concept and production of a four-actor version of the story was written by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon, and premiered in 1996. Patrick Barlow rewrote this adaptation in 2005.^[1]

The play's concept calls for the entirety of the 1935 adventure film The 39 Steps to be performed with a cast of only four. One actor plays the hero, Richard Hannay; an actress (or sometimes actor) plays the three women with whom he has romantic entanglements; and two other actors play every other character in the show, each occasionally playing multiple characters at once. Thus the film's serious spy story is given a comedic twist.