The 39 Steps

The Thirty-Nine Steps
‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’ was performed by the company Fiery Angel Limited at the Criterion theatre, Piccadilly Circus on the 11th of October 2011, with the actors Dermot Canavan as man 1 , Sean Kearns as man 2 , Laura Rogers as Annabella Schmidt/ Pamela/ Margaret and Rufus Wright as Richard Hannay.
The Thirty-Nine Steps is a farcical comedy about a man called Richard Hannay who is falsely accused of the murder of a female German spy by the name of Annabella Schmidt in his home in London. Throughout the story Richard is on the run from the police and is on a mission to find out what the thirty-nine steps is.
Initially I believed that I would not enjoy it because I thought it was going to be a dark and depressing gothic styled play, but as soon as it started it exceeded my expectations completely. I loved the constant comedy and the frantic speed of the piece brought it all together.
The costumes used in the thirty-nine steps works because of the nature of the play combined with the farce comedy makes the performance extremely enjoyable. The actors were outstanding vocally and physically, and could clearly show the difference between each character, but the costume changes gave a visual aid to the audience to define what character was what. For instance, the costume of Annabella Schmitt is entirely black with lace and a small box hat with netting draping over her face, to give a look of mystery and sophistication. This costume alongside her acting skills created an extremely strong character, the combination   made it easy to tell between the three characters she played as they were all completely different from each other. One being the sophisticated German spy dressed all in black who was very melodramatic with a strong German brogue, another being a very well brought up, intellectual well spoken young lady from a over privileged family. Her final character was a young, married Scottish woman, who wanted the life of excitement and...