The 39 Steps spoof offers enjoyable fun on White Rock stage
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, July 7, 2026
Less a well-rounded comedy play and more a species of theatrical dare, Patrick Barlow’s affectionate parody of the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film The 39 Steps presents a virtual minefield for community theatre directors and actors.
It’s an opportunity for seasoned players and skilled comedians to send up the original with ludicrous bits of stage business, audacious timing and a knowing wink to the audience (much in the same vein as the movie ‘tributes’ that are a still fondly remembered feature of the old Carol Burnett Show).
White Rock Players Club came close to courting disaster by taking on this play’s challenge of evoking most of the movie’s scenes, and more than 100 characters, with only four players and minimal set elements.
The good news is that director Miles Lavkulich cast members Kay Knighting, Lauren Fischer, Amanda Gallacher and Abigail Walkner, and a large retinue of behind the scenes talents in sets, lighting, sound etc. have won the day – and the club’s gamble – with youthful energy and considerable elan.
Indeed, The 39 Steps bids fair to offer audiences a solidly enjoyable evening of profoundly silly comedy for the rest of its run (to July 19, at Oceana PARC Playhouse, 1532 Johnston Rd.)
Producers Scott Kristjanson and Peter Godman should count themselves lucky to have landed such an appealing and conscientious group of players for the production, and Lavkulich has kept them well-focused and well up-to-pace, amid all the absurdity.
In this innocent-man-on-the-run-across-the-Scottish-Highlands spy story, the majority of supporting roles are taken, commendably, by Clown 1 (Gallacher) and Clown 2 (Walkner).
Gallacher’s cheery manner and mobile countenance are well-employed in a dizzying plethora of roles, while Walkner (who at one point must be both a master spy and the person he has shot – at the same time) has a rare quality of maintaining her aplomb and stage presence no matter how frantic the character and scene changes become.
As the hapless fugitive Richard Hannay, Knighting (seen to advantage in WRPC’s Sense and Sensibility) is clearly a very able farceur – he reminds me more of great British comedy player Leslie Phillips than Hitchcock’s original leading man, Robert Donat – and his breezy, capable playing helps carry the show.
Fischer, as femme fatale Annabella Schmidt, flirty crofter’s wife Margaret and Hannay’s wilfully suspicious love interest, Pamela, throws themself admirably into the characters and their inherent possibilities for physical comedy (and Lavkulich gets much comedy mileage from the fact that Fischer is physically taller than Knighting).
The down side? Some funny lines and a great deal of exposition is lost to cast members’ well-intentioned attempts to reproduce dialects (it’s a tough comedy lesson, learned by the best comics of yesteryear, that you must ‘do’ an accent, rather than letting it ‘do’ you).
And there’s no getting away from the fact that, while the current cast aquits themselves remarkably well, The 39 Steps is still a piece that requires more seasoned performers to mine the maximum potential – the difference, after all, between winning good laughs and achieving show-stopping hilarity.