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Legendary auteur Alfred Hitchcock had read Buchan’s book upon its release, and had been greatly taken by its tales of daring do and mystery, declaring it worth a cinematic redux. By the time he was in a position to shoot the novel, however, the years between had led him to realise the storyline would need a serious overhaul, and a healthy dose of sexing up. Upon its release, the movie was an immediate smash hit – and even Buchan himself would later declare it to be far superior to his original.

Lest you wonder where this history lesson is taking you, it is important that you understand the distinction between the two, as it is upon Hitchcock’s film that Patrick Barlow’s stage adaptation, currently playing at the Academy for Performing Arts is based. The Master of Suspense introduced a love interest, removed the soliloquies on the British Empire, and kept the action fast paced and flying by.

Richard Hannay, played with stiff-upper-lip brilliance by Mark Pegler, is a Canadian visitor to London who attends a music hall show where he encounters the beautiful, mysterious and voluptuous spy Annabella Smith (performed with femme fatale finesse by Helen Christinson). During the course of the night she is killed by an unseen assassin, and he flees to Scotland. The rest of the plot revolves around Hannay’s escapades on the run, and a cast of characters each queerer than the other; 139 to be exact, which here are performed by just four people: Pegler as Hannay, the aforementioned Christinson in three female roles, leaving 135 parts to the comically brilliant Jo Turner and Russell Fletcher.