Take ‘The 39 Steps’ at Rose-Hulman tonight
Entertainment On-line March 27th. 2011, 3:09amTERRE HAUTE — The grandeur of the Broadway stage, the intrigue of an Alfred Hitchcock film and a fast-paced whodunit mystery are all aspects of the exhilarating, award-winning comedy “The 39 Steps” being presented by New York-based Windwood Theatricals tonight at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s Hatfield Hall Theater.
General admission tickets for the 7:30 p.m. show are $26-$32 for adults and $20 for youths and students.
Tickets can be purchased by calling (812) 877-8544, visiting the Hatfield Hall ticket desk from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, and online at www.hatfieldhall.com.
“The 39 Steps” is a play adapted from the 1915 novel by John Buchan and the 1935 film by Alfred Hitchcock. Patrick Barlow wrote the adaptation, based on the original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon, of a two-actor version of the play.
The play’s concept calls for the entirety of the 1935 adventure film to be performed nearly verbatim onstage, but with a small cast. Dan Fenaughty plays the hero, Richard Hannay; Emily Catherine Larger plays the three women with whom he has romantic entanglements; and Matt Malloy, Nicholas Pauling, Jackie Schram and Tobias Shaw play every other character in the show: heroes, villains, men, women, children and even the occasional inanimate object.
This often requires lightning-fast changes and occasionally for the actors to play multiple characters at once. Thus, the film’s serious spy story is played mainly for laughs, and the script is full of allusions to (and puns on the titles of) other Alfred Hitchcock films, including “Rear Window,” “Psycho” and “North by Northwest.”
After opening in Europe, the play had its U.S. premiere with a cast of four actors from the Huntington Theater in 2007 in Boston. It opened on Broadway, as “Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps,” in a Roundabout Theatre production in 2008, and ran until early 2010.
The play won the London Theatre’s prestigious Lawrence Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 2007 and the What’s On Stage Award for Best Comedy in 2007. The Roundabout Broadway production won the 2008 Drama Desk Award for unique theatrical experience.
It won two technical Tony Awards in 2008 and was nominated for best play, best scenic design of a play and best costume design of a play.
Fenaughty has been featured in Broadway productions of “Rumors” and national tours of “Cabaret,” “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Encore!/Eureka!”
Larger played Rosie in Windwood Theatrical’s 2010 “Cabaret” tour, and her regional acting credits include “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “The Music Man” and “Annie Get Your Gun.” She has Midwest roots, having studied at the Dayton Ballet School.
Malloy is a graduate of New York City’s Pace University who has performed in “Leading Ladies,” “Awake and Sing,” “Play it Again Sam” and “The Birthday Party.”
Pauling has an international acting background, being a part of European productions of “Hamlet” and “The Tempest;” South African productions of “Amadeus,” “Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and “Romeo and Juliet;” and American productions of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Importance of Being Earnest” and “The Zoo Story.”
Schram is in her first national tour. Her regional credits feature “You Can’t Take it with You” and “The Rocky Horror Show.” She graduated from the University of Tampa and now lives in New York.
Shaw is a graduate of the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts and the clown school Estudio Busqueda de Pantomima-Teatro in Guanajuato, Mexico.
He has performed regionally with the American Shakespeare Center, New York City’s The Public Theatre and Adirondack Shakespeare Company.
The production’s director, Kevin Bigger, was assistant director on “The 39 Steps” for more than three years during its Broadway, off-Broadway and Boston performances. He has also directed the New York Center Stage production of “Manuscript.”
Windwood Theatricals concentrates on developing, producing and general-managing new and established theatrical productions from and for Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theaters.