As ripping yarns go, John Buchan's 1915 spy romp is ripe for pastiche. But which version? Not the dry-as-cowpats original, that's for sure. Best off charting square-jawed hero-with-a-heart Richard Hannay's flight to nowhere via one of three big-screen adaptations. All these reinvent Hannay's Boys' Own adventure in disguises of their own invention. While Patrick Barlow's ingenious take on things may look to Hitchcock, it is itself whip-smart enough to warrant double-agent status.
Having the yarn played by four actors who work their way through a box of hats, wigs and accents is bluff enough. Having them do it as if an am-dram outfit performing some ration-book matinee on the cheap is the real sleight-of-hand, however. Hannay is a low-rent leading man for whom sporting a tweed suit and pencil moustache is itself an adventure, never mind the dead German vamp in his bedsit who forces him to go on the run. If his leading lady plays it straight as fantasies allow, she's more than compensated for by a double-act of trenchcoated stooges who could have stepped from the arch imaginings of Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective.
Maria Aitken's production is a beautifully compact conceit that skirts the right side of self-referential. Redirected for its commercial touring franchise by David Newman, some of the required scabbiness may be lost, but its measured pacing is giddily dream-like. As played by David Michaels, Clare Swinburne, Alan Perrin and Colin Mace, this is a genuine crowd-pleaser.
From yesterday's later editions.
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