Play's homage to Hitchcock's film

"I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life." So begins John Buchan's classic 1915 adventure story, The Thirty-Nine Steps, with his initially weary and jaundiced hero, Richard Hannay. Life for him gets immeasurably more exciting almost immediately, with dead bodies, a trip to Scotland and a grim race against time with German agents.

The opening two pages of the book are just about all the Buchan there is in the extraordinarily successful theatrical adaptation by Patrick Barlow that rolls into the Oxford Playhouse next week. Everything else is effectively a homage to the film made by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935, starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll - a version of the action story that blithely changed three elements from the original.

One is relatively unimportant: the film has the figures 39' in place of the full words for accessibility (and that has stuck with this stage presentation); the second is the introduction of the love interest (there are no women in the Buchan), and the third - as I am sure everyone knows - is that the Steps' in the novel are not the same in the film! Then along came Barlow and the director and actress Maria Aitken two years ago, who decided to do what is happening quite a lot on the stage these days: pare down the cast to the bare essentials and see if a story can still be told with, in this case, only four actors, three of whom play multiple roles. And it seems to have worked rather well: the Aitken production has been running at London's Criterion Theatre for more than 700 performances and has been running on Broadway since February. Indeed, the play was nominated for six Tony Awards and won two at last week's ceremony in New York. The story seems to travel well: not only is the show touring in this country, it is in Australia as well, not to mention Italy, Israel and Korea.

Maria Aitken has made that not always easy transition from leading actress to leading director and visiting teacher at a number of drama schools both here and in the US. From New York, she told me how she had first come to be involved with the show.

"I was originally invited to direct it at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn and then had to invent a rationale for myself: how to bring off this sweeping outdoor adventure story with a cast of four. So I imagined a leading man in a tatty English rep in the fities, who fancied himself in the Donat/Hannay role. He asks the resident leading lady to play all the female parts on condition she pushes a bit of furniture about - Hannay is too grand for that! Then he spots two old vaudevillians, eager to be part of this, and says 'OK, you can be in it provided you play all the other parts and don't let any of your old routines crop up.' So there is this sense of a theatrical hierarchy in the play."

I asked her what, as a director, she first thinks of when faced with a scene such as Richard Hannay climbing across a moving train on the Forth Bridge. Apparently, it's all very straightforward.

"The designer is responsible for the concept that we are in an empty theatre with only the minimum of props in the wings. So when you are faced with three trunks and three ladders, there isn't much more you can do than ask the actors to do the impossible with their bodies and add some smoke and sound . . ."

Aitken is, hardly surprisingly, very bullish about the two main actors on this tour, David Michaels and Clare Swinburne.

"I'd seen Clare in Japes by Simon Gray in London and thought her excellent; I'd also seen David playing Alastair Campbell brilliantly at the Tricycle. They are both highly accomplished and do the play proud. But those two clowns work damn hard too!"

The Hitchcock film was, of course, a huge success nearly 75 years ago, but at a time when a bit of gung-ho still goes a long way, as in the Indiana Jones franchise, spies, stiff upper lips and heroism seem still to work.

"I hope that the patriotism is touching and the romance something the audience wants to see work out. Also, a man on the run, unjustly pursued, is still a potent bit of storytelling. We studied the film very, very carefully and have reproduced all the iconic moments - but, of course, it's all managed within the corset of an under-equipped theatre and only four actors, so it's homage to theatre as well."

For Broadway, Maria Aitken did ask Patrick Barlow for a few rewrites - "It's bigger and brighter and not too parochial in its references as a result - we didn't need to do this for Australia, where they still completely understand Englishness!". And, however experienced she is at the game, she hinted at further problems encountered in New York.

"The Broadway scene is a lot more risky and excitable than the West End - the cost of a show is so much greater. And the backstage union has rules which are very baffling to a British director . . . they seem to impede a show like this one."

Not something likely to happen at the Playhouse next week, I fancy.

The 39 Steps is at the Oxford Playhouse from Monday until Saturday, June 28. For tickets call 01865 305305.