This Madras-based group is all set to woo city-audiences with a theatrical tribute to the great Alfred Hitchcock in a way that can't be captured on film

This Madras-based group is all set to woo city-audiences with a theatrical tribute to the great Alfred Hitchcock in a way that can't be captured on film

This theatre group's travails are hardly new to the city. In town last to stage a British play, Evam is now here to premier 39 Steps, a play about the making of a Hitchcock film. Claiming that this is unlike anything seen on an Indian stage before, Evam tells us this is one play that cannot be reproduced on film and comes with nuances every time you watch it.

Theatre

Having been a Broadway blockbuster for a good seven years, Evam caught on to the script when they watched it at their visit to Edinburgh Fringe Festival (a theatre festival) in 2009. "I was fascinated with all the ways in which this play could come together on stage," says director Bhargav or Baggy as he is more commonly known. "It is one of the possible forms that theatre should take in the future where each live show would be different from each other and involve more audience interaction," he adds.

Though the play is named after the movie, yet it does not adhere to the storyline of the film. According to Baggy, the play is a comic tribute to the spine chilling Hitchcockian thriller, which showed how an innocent man gets trapped in a national conspiracy. The play, however, records the experiences of four young men who try remaking the film but with a comic touch. Through the course of the play Baggy brings out the experiences of these men, who play around 120 characters as a part of the film.

Sharing that the play script is a comic take on the clich ufffds used in the film and the performance cannot be recreated as a film, Baggy says, "Something should set a live performance apart. It is how you can never recreate the fun ofu00a0 a liveu00a0 circus in a film. This makes it special for the audience as the actors are constantly doing something that is likely of going wrong on stage."

Besides this, Bhargav who debuts as a director for 39 Steps faced the challenge of bringing together a tech-heavy ensemble play with seven irreplaceable backstage members. "The backstage has worked in the framework of the play for as long as the actors did. The challenge was trying to get everybody to see how I wanted it to look like in the end," says Baggy.

After a premier and a series of shows in Chennai, Bhargav looks rather confident in his shoes and seems to know where his play can really be slotted. "It's not an outright comedy as the play does not leave enough time for the laughter to build. It's amazing how the audience clues into different parts of the play," he says.

At: Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Malleswaram
On: December 25, 7.30 pm and December 26, 6 pm
Call: 4206 4969
For: Rs 200, 400 and 750

39 Steps, The Film

The film 39 steps is a British thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. Loosely basedu00a0 on the novel calledu00a0 The Thiry-Nine Steps by John Buchan, the film, a spy caper traces a man called Richard Hannay, who is embroiled in a national conspiracy. He has encounters with glamorous spies,u00a0 secret service agencies and the film has all the trappings of an espionage thriller. The 39 Steps not only refers to physical steps taken throughout the film, which has different associations but also refers to a secret organisation.

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