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Plays, comedy shows and dance in Hong Kong
Hitchcock fans get excited: an Australian stage production is bringing The 39 Steps to town. Actor Mark Pegler leads the fast paced British espionage story, playing leading man Richard Hannay – the pedestrian who gets caught in a web of spies and lies.
“He’s a pretty typical 1930s English man,” says Pegler of his character Hannay. “Upper middle class, a fellow who has just returned from an adventure overseas. He comes back and he’s feeling pretty lost, sorry for himself, with no connection to London and England anymore.”
With that, a series of bizarre events happen to Hannay, which forces him to fulfill his destiny of being an accidental British spy. Starting with meeting a mysterious woman at the playhouse, he gets wrapped into a plot to uncover the mystery of the 39 Steps (which, by the way, is not a staircase of any sort), and gets into all kinds of trouble along the way.
Though Pegler just plays one character, the three other actors in the cast share an incredible 138 roles between them. “Sometimes characters will change into other characters right on stage,” explains Pegler. “So the audience is in on the joke.”
The adaptation of the movie to theatre has received immense praise on both Broadway and the West End, with the production winning the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy last year. Pegler also says that the reception during their run at the Sydney Opera House this summer was incredibly enthusiastic. For those who love the film (like us), you can’t help but be charmed when Pegler whistles the famous tune of Mr Memory, or when he walks out wearing the very real pencil moustache that he has grown for the play.
Bourree Lam