1st Night Photos: Suchet & Davenport Climb Steps

The 39 Steps revolves around Richard Hannay, a Canadian visitor to 1930s London. After a disturbance at the end of a “Mr Memory” music hall show, Hannay meets Annabella, who’s on the run from foreign secret agents. The pair are followed back to Hannay’s apartment where Annabella is murdered, setting Hannay on the run in an attempt to break the spy ring and prove his innocence.

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The romantic spy thriller was memorably filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935 and has been adapted, with a comic twist, by Patrick Barlow (aka Desmond Olivier Dingle, artistic director of the fictional National Theatre of Brent), from an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon.

On stage, four actors – Charles Edwards (as Hannay), Catherine McCormack, Rupert Degas and Simon Gregor – play some “150 roles” between them and recreate all of the story’s thrills and spills, including the chase on the Flying Scotsman, the escape on the Forth Bridge and, according to promotional material, the “first theatrical bi-plane crash ever staged”. Maria Aitken directs.

For 1st Night Photos, our Whatsonstage.com photographer was on hand for the post-show party at Café de Paris with the company and their guests, including Jack Davenport (son of the director), Richard Coyle, David Suchet, Daniela Nardini, Tamsin Greig, Patricia Hodge and Tricycle artistic director Nicolas Kent.

– by Terri Paddock