THIRTY years ago, two writers, Simon Corbie and Nobby Dimon, adapted John Buchan’s famous story of spies, derring-do and pre-war tension in London and the Highlands, into a play. It had been a successful Alfred Hitchcock film, updated from 1915 to 1935. Ten years later, Patrick Barlow took the play, shook it up and gave it a brilliant 21st century comedic edge.

Twenty years on – and 110 years since the original novel – Sherborne’s APS has chosen Barlow’s inspired version as their summer show, and created a dazzling tour-de-force, sold out for the week-long run at the Studio Theatre.

The cast of four, led by Jeremy Small as our dashing hero Richard Hannay, has to depict 40 characters. With Small fully occupied as Hannay, and Hazel Perrett as three very different women – doomed femme fatale Annabella Schmidt, down-trodden Scottish wife Margaret McTyte and independent-minded Pamela Edwards, it falls to Clown 1 (Freddie Wopat) and Clown 2 (Gary Brooks) to play all the other parts … hapless hoods, bumbling bobbies, music hall performers (including a hysterically funny cancan sequence), Scottish hoteliers, a sinister German scientist, biplane pilots, railway workers and more.

The stats of staging this show make amazing reading (and hard work for the actors and back-stage crew) – a total of 44 costume changes for the two clowns, six costume changes for Annabella, Pamela and Margaret, 14 costume changes for the stage crew, plus more than 200 sound cues and over 80 lighting cues.

And it all works like clockwork! The 39 Steps is a nail-biting, fast-paced thriller wrapped up in a farce, but also it remains unexpectedly topical – perhaps more so even than when the play was chosen for APS’ June 2025 production. That distant world of spies, disinformation, talk of appeasement, warnings of military unpreparedness and increasing international tension is back and the dramatic background of Buchan’s tale suddenly feels relevant, as well as entertaining.

This is the debut APS production for director Jane McKenna, who only recently joined the company. She has very much taken to heart Patrick Barlow’s advice on staging the show: “I would certainly encourage adventurousness and flexibility … take what looks helpful or fun, then invent the rest.”

So we have not only cancan-dancers but a parade of Highland (dummy) characters, plus bagpipes, imaginative use of silhouette cartoons to depict aerial action, simple props to make train carriages, cars, hotel receptions and the London Palladium, a certain amount of improvisation and boundless energy. It’s huge fun.

FC