A play for playing sake. What a relief to see that “The 39 Steps”, the opening act of this year's META festival being held in New Delhi, is not just so. Yes, this take-off on the Hitchcock classic by the same name (and also a play made immortal at the Broadway by Patrick Barlow) has its share of imperfections but it also had its moments to offer to play-goers.
Directed by Bhargav Ramakrishnan, this posy of young actors from Chennai glided through the one-and-a-half-hour show with ease. Ease with a language that had variegated accents — bit English, bit Scottish, also thrown into it a speck of German drift. This, knitted into a plot thick with spies and conspiracies, lovers and lampooners, bloody murders and Scotland Yard sleuths, train journeys and car chases and of course hilarious situations.
The play opened with the protagonist Richard Hannay, a man with an amazing knack of tackling every tacky situation. A bored Hannay went to the London palladium to watch a play, met a war-time spy in distress who charmed her way into his house, made him privy to an intrigue and got murdered that night. Soon began Hannay's flight through British countryside and Scottish inns as a fugitive, with both the law keepers and the law breakers in hot pursuit of him. As many as 140 characters stretched in over 30 scenes did their bit to arrive at an ending that at last helped Hannay clear the charge of murder from his name.
What worked for the play, produced by Evam Entertainment and presented in New Delhi for the first time, were a couple of things. First, the delivery of dialogues. Pretty impressive, with all the drawls and the twangs, at times throwing up comical situations, particularly with the Scottish burrs. If somewhere they had overdone it, it was only to amplify the comic effect. Navin Balachnadran, as the chubby Hannay, might have gone Indian with the accent at times but he had his pluses, say, in catching the right comic moment — with speech, shrugs, smiles and of course the smitten stares.
Renu Abraham, seen in most of the female roles, had to be given points for her acting prowess and dialogue delivery. If she was good as a spy, she was believable as a typical damsel in distress who eventually falls in love with the man she hates the most, a character perfected by Wodehouse books and old Hollywood flicks which typically ended with a hot kiss on the lips.
Then there were Sunil Vishnu K. and T.M. Karthik playing a dozen role pretty impressively.
Lights, shadows, costumes, music and sound too played a fine role here. But what stood out was its great use of props. Said the director Bhargav Ramakrishnan in a chat after the show at the Kamani Auditorium this past Thursday, “We have no resources, no great technical support like in the West. But we really really worked hard to bring in good design elements into each scene. I must say, the technical team is as important as the four-member cast for the play.” Well, it showed.
A shift from traditional plays was the use of hands-free mikes by the cast. One of the charms of watching actors play-act live in front of you is definitely their skill at throwing voices at the audience. But Bhargav argued, “I know Kamani Auditorium is actor friendly but the play had many sounds to drown the voice of the actors, like carrying on a conversation with the sound of a moving train at the backdrop.” Well, point taken.
But the play could have a bit more pace. To keep the tempo on, there had to be rapid change of scene. At times, the production couldn't live up to it, might be because emulating the speed of a film on stage is easier said than done.
(“The 39 Steps” is nominated for seven categories of Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards, to be presented in New Delhi on March 7)
