Forget spies, just give me stockings

[Dave Monroe]

The Times
August 12

Forget spies, just give me stockings

As a cast of four performs The 39 Steps, Richard
Morrison asks whether all great works of art can be
cut to the quick

A few years ago a famous spoof went round the music
world. It purported to be a report on “orchestral
efficiency” by a management consultant, and was full
of passages such as: “You appear to have no fewer than
16 first violinists playing the same music. Surely one
player, suitably amplified, could provide the
requisite decibels.”

That sprang to my mind when I heard about the new show
at the Tricycle Theatre in North London. It’s a stage
adaptation of The 39 Steps — not John Buchan’s
original novel, but Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 movie. And
yes, it will re-create that erotic tour de force in
which the ice-blonde Madeleine Carroll decides to
unpeel her wet stockings while handcuffed to Robert
Donat.

But although this may be hard to believe, that scene
isn’t the main reason why I shall hurry to Kilburn.
No, I want to observe how just four actors manage to
play all 150 roles in the film, and how such
Hitchcockian stunts as the chase on The Flying
Scotsman will be conjured up by the Tricycle’s far
from lavish facilities.

The eccentric brain behind this heroically
understaffed madness belongs to Patrick Barlow — a
leading light in what might be called the reductionist
movement: the brand of comedy in which epic-sized
classics are tackled, with immense energy and
(apparently) poker-faced seriousness, by tiny casts on
shoestring budgets. Most people have heard of Barlow’s
National Theatre of Brent and their American
counterpart, the Reduced Shakespeare Company. And on
the Edinburgh Fringe right now there are many
imitators. One Danish company is promising all of
Homer’s Iliad — played by three people.

But reductionism has spread beyond comedy. I have
rarely enjoyed Wagner so much as when I saw a version
of The Ring condensed into two nights and cut to 14
players by the ingenious Jonathan Dove. Nothing vital
was lost, and the pace was like a thriller.

A fascinating book on this subject came out last year.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink proposes a “thin slicing”
theory of life and art. Just as you can tell all you
need to know about a cucumber from a thin slice, he
argues, so the thinnest encounter with an unknown
person or work of art can give your “adaptive
unconscious” enough information to form a sound
opinion.

That’s the basis of speed-dating, of course — but also
of that cult internet game in which people vie to
summarise the world’s most complex novels in fewer
than 15 words. My winner is the genius who reduced
Thomas Pynchon’s vast and virtually indecipherable
Gravity’s Rainbow to: “Sloth or entropy? Who can tell,
really?” The beauty of Gladwell’s theory is that,
whether right or wrong, it saves so much time! Why
waste your life wading through the complete version of
anything, if the essence can be gleaned with a single
glance? Come to think of it, do we really need as many
as four actors for The 39 Steps? The Tricycle could
just put the wet stockings and handcuffs on display,
and leave the rest to our fevered imaginations.

The 39 Steps, Tricycle Theatre, London NW6
(www.tricycle.co.uk 020-7328 1000), Thur-Sept 9

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14929-2303909,00.html

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com