Can a mainstream play survive in NYC without big-name stars? In today’s persistently precarious economic climate, it’s a question on the minds of many working in commercial theater.
When Broadway producers insist to Maria Aitken that theater depends on celebrity, however, she usually responds, “Well, I did a show that ran for three years on Broadway with nobody anybody had heard of. And they say, ‘That was a freak.’ ”
The exception to the rule Aitken is referring to is the screwball thriller “The 39 Steps,” which she directed in a 2006 London production still delighting audiences today, as well as the 2008 Broadway transfer that earned six Tony nominations and two wins. Adapted for the stage from John Buchan’s 1915 novel and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon, and rewritten by Patrick Barlow, it seems an unlikely commercial success in the U.S. given its distinct British pedigree and peculiar comic rhythms.
But as Aitken explains, there’s always a market for theater that revels in its own theatricality.
“Audiences appear to be enchanted by the idea that you make a show with almost nothing,” she says. Structured as a frame-by-frame parody of Hitchcock’s famous thriller, “The 39 Steps” is a whirlwind of dizzying costume changes and actors portraying multiple eccentrics. Its aesthetic looks deceptively spare and shabby, making the performances all the more impressive to audiences. Aitken says, “It’s two ladders and three trunks! Of course, that’s not entirely true because the dresses are practically doing a ballet in the wings.”
The production’s logistics turn Aitken into a choreographer of chaos as much as a director. For the upcoming Off-Broadway incarnation, which opens April 13 at Union Square Theatre, she had the cast rehearsing in costume long before official tech rehearsals. The precise parameters of the script and its accompanying soundtrack allow the actors to discover the rhythms of their characters. “You impose the structure and then they start personalizing it, playing within the confines,” she says.
“If you listen to the collision of the syllables you will find out who they are; I think the characters are in there. Comedy is defined by language, really. It has to do with consonants and the way they kind of abut. Sometimes you can look at a play and you know exactly how to say it because the author has transmitted his message, like a message in a ship bottle.”
Aitken, a former West End star who knows a thing or two about specific comedic cadences—having played more Noël Coward leads than any other actor—admits part of the reason she gels with “The 39 Steps” cast is her performance background. “The moment I started to cast it my spirits started to soar, because I realized I was going to get a very good cast together,” she remembers. A particular style of vaudevillian performativity is required, and Arnie Burton, Billy Carter, Robert Petkoff, and Brittany Vicars have it: “Their funny bones are in the right place. The funny bone is the important thing.”
Pairing actors in auditions is also crucial for a show as collaborative as this one. When asked about what makes for great stage chemistry, Aitken searches for the words. “Until you put them together you can’t tell.... It doesn’t have to be love or anything. In fact, hate passes very well onstage. But it has to be a kind of...fizz.” Performers who look great on paper or who nail their first audition often aren’t cast because that enigmatic compatibility just isn’t there. As Aitken points out, that’s one of the many reasons auditioners shouldn’t take rejection too personally.
“I don’t trust the audition process,” she adds. “I think it’s a rotten way of telling too much about anyone.” For her, the audition room is a space to get to know actors, to hear their delivery of the text’s rhythms, to gauge the often intangible interactions that tug at an audience.
“It is a curious convention, the theater.”
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