BY TRAV S.D. | The theatre is Lucy Van Pelt and her football; I am Charlie Brown. I keep getting sweet-talked back, but it’s really just a trick, and this is what inevitably happens:
I went to see “39 Steps” on assignment for this publication. The next day, I voluntarily opted not to write the review (or take the fee) so that I could, on travsd.wordpress.com, write what I really feel — and what I feel is too strong, too extreme, too vitriolic for any respectable publication to be responsible for.
Editor’s Note: Despite Mr. S.D.’s offer, we insisted on running the review without edits and for full pay, plus reimbursement for travel expenses and one session of trauma counseling.
Is “garbage” too strong a word? If “garbage” is something that’s useless to you, that’s disposable, that you want to not just throw away, but to have carted away, far far away to a landfill 50 miles from where you live, where you’ll never have to see it or smell it or think about it ever again — then, no, “garbage” is not too strong a word.
I genuinely wanted to see this show. It’s set in the 1930s, people spoke highly of it, it’s supposed to be “farcical,” and I really love the Hitchcock movie. But, no, it was a total and utter waste of time, an exercise in vacuity and emptiness: well-executed, well-designed, well-performed, well-“directed” emptiness, all cleverness hung on a foundation of nothing. It was like looking at a bunch of ornaments with no Christmas tree underneath.
You know the conceit, right? Four actors perform an adaptation of Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps,” with wink-wink jokes along the way. They do an impressive number of funny characters, and a little quick-change (but not as much as you’d think — most of the changes aren’t that quick). I might find it an entertaining vaudeville turn or comedy sketch if it were kept to ten minutes. But it’s a full-length evening.
Much like “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (which I also detested), it’s a sort of play-within-a-play, in that the actors keep doing a bunch of meta business about missed cues and so forth. But the actors who play the parts are never defined, nor are the offstage stagehands and board ops etc. who give them these miscues. So it’s just a bunch of general business, like that part of the circus where a bunch of clowns come out and start bumping into each other and falling down for no reason. Who are they? Any idiot can fall down in the service of nothing. I don’t need to go to a theatre for that.
Because of this secondary level, we can’t be drawn into a plot or care about the characters or their predicament. It’s a pity. As in “Edwin Drood,” I found myself longing to watch a REAL version. In desperation to look at something with integrity that I could care about, I found myself counting the number of bricks in the bare wall at the back of the stage: It turns out there are 9,357. (You see, I really did that).
As for the much-praised and award-winning design elements: they were undoubtedly well-executed and even beautiful to look at and listen to. But I must tell you in all seriousness there was NONE of it….NONE of it, the toy train, the silhouettes, the puppets and dummies and fake limbs, that I haven’t seen dozens and scores and hundreds of times in the storefonts and basements and little theatres of New York’s indie theatre. Is that what gets you a Tony? Then I can name you a hundred friends who deserve those Tonys.
My takeaway from “39 Steps?” I’d rather be dumped in a cold Scottish marsh in handcuffs at night and followed by vicious dogs than have such an experience again.
But if you want to?
“39 Steps” is playing at the Union Square Theatre (100 E. 17th St.) Mon. at 7 p.m., Wed. at 2 p.m. & 8 p.m., Thurs. & Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 p.m. & 8 p.m. and Sun. at 3 p.m. Tickets ($39-$89) on sale via 39StepsNY.com, thru Ticketmaster online and by phone at 877-250-2929, and also in person at the Union Square Theatre box office (1 p.m. daily except Tues.). Premium seats are $105. $20 tickets for students, veterans, armed forces, NYPD and FDNY are available in person at the box office with ID the day of the show.
