The 39 Steps Tickets

The suspense! The parody play The 39 Steps is ready to take Chicagoans on a riveting journey at the Drury Lane Theatre. The spy thriller, adapted from the novel by John Buchan and the film by Alfred Hitchcock, merges farce with Hitchcockian style. Get ready to play detective and book The 39 Steps tickets on TodayTix.

Watch the masterful eight actors in this Chicago production tackle over 150 characters across two hours. Together they demonstrate how a duo can save Britain from espionage. The 39 Steps is a four-hander requiring double or triple casting. This multiplicitous casting is perfect for a show based on Buchan’s novel, as an iconic line from that book is: “A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different.”

The original play by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon premiered in 1995, with the subsequent rewritten play by Patrick Barlow in 2005. Barlow’s adaptation garnered several Olivier Awards, Drama Desk Awards, and Tony Awards — it was nominated for the 2008 Tony Award for Best Play.

In true whodunit fashion, you’ll be questioning what’s going on in between bouts of laughter. Get The 39 Steps tickets on TodayTix.

The 39 Steps follows Major-General Sir Richard Hannay, who gets entangled in an international spy ring while on vacation in London. When an agent gets killed in his apartment, Hannay is wanted for murder and must elude the police. While uncovering the conspiracy of the “39 steps,” Hannay must also stop others from releasing secret information.

Drury Lane Theatre’s production of The 39 Steps is directed by Johanna McKenzie Miller, a director Chicago theatre audiences will recognize. Miller recently directed Drury Lane’s productions of Shrek and Steel Magnolias. She’s also worked at the Marriott Theatre, First Folio Theatre, and Northwestern.

While it’s primarily a parody of the original novel and film, there are plenty of other Hitchcock Easter eggs for fans to find. You’ll hear references alluding to some of the director’s other films like Strangers on a Train, Vertigo, and North by Northwest.

What to Watch For

• Gavin Lee, who plays Richard Hannay, has done several shows on Broadway. Some of his credits include Squidward in SpongeBob SquarePants, the Broadway Musical, Thenadier in Les Miserables, and Bert in Mary Poppins.
• Patrick Barlow’s adaptation opened June 17, 2005, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. From there, it transferred to the Criterion Theatre on the West End in September 2006. When it closed in September 2015, it became the fifth-longest play in West End history.
• When the show moved to Broadway in January 2008, it was billed as *Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. The show closed in January 2009.
• Patrick Marlow is an English actor, comedian, and playwright with an alter ego known as Desmond Olivier Dingle. “Dingle” is the founder of the National Theatre of Brent, which is a two-man operation.