A high school theater company emulates Hitchcock’s production.
This piece first appeared in The Vermont Standard.
Last Friday evening, Harriett Worrell sat behind a much-used folding table, directing traffic. The long time drama coach tracked the scene on stage, then implored a young actor to fall to his knees and bow to an as yet imaginary telephone. She fielded questions about the desk and teacups and biscuits that a 1935 Scottish sheriff’s office likely requires. And Worrell also watched stage left as she cued the fervent sheriff and his hapless prisoner to scuffle their way across the dais. It was only their third rehearsal, but Worrell and Woodstock Union High School and Middle School’s Yoh Players were well into the process of shaping the characters, and the nuances, of their upcoming production of The Thirty Nine Steps.
The play is built on Alfred Hitchcock’s movie of the same name, which the widely acknowledged maestro of suspense filmed over seventy-five years ago. The story’s construction is one used in several Hitchcock films; happenstance in London throws together the suave but at-loose-ends Richard Hannay and an enigmatical young woman who claims to be a spy. As Hannay attempts to subvert the plot she discloses, he finds himself wrongly accused of murder and on the lam. The 1935 movie draws from Scottish author John Buchan’s first novel in a Hannay-based series, although Hitchcock was reportedly liberal in his use of artistic license.
The version that the Yoh Players are currently working for March performances was adapted from the Hitchcock movie in 2005 by comedian and National Theater of Brent founder Patrick Barlow. His show opened in London in 2006, where it is still playing, and only recently closed its New York run after over 1,100 performances on and off Broadway.
The play’s been a “hot ticket,” says Worrell, “it’s a farce from front to back, it’s very fast paced, it’s very funny.”
Barlow intended that all the many characters in his adaptation be performed with just four actors, which was, he says in his introductory notes, the “exquisite idea,” of two of his collaborators. In the Yoh production, Cameron Ewasko plays the central character Hannay, but Ewasko is the only actor with single duty. Cast mate Rae Ellis takes on three female roles, while Harry Borsh and Jordan Sokol both play more than ten characters. Worrell feels the multi-character device adds to the play’s hilarity. “When you have two men playing many characters, some of which are women,” she says, “that presents itself as farcical immediately.”
And Sokol and Borsh love the opportunity to exercise their acting skills. In one scene of The Thirty Nine Steps they take on the personae, for instance, of two elderly Scottish curmudgeons, roles that have the duo embracing the fine arts of slapstick movement and impeccably garbled speech. Sokol particularly favors the Jeckyll-and-Hyde-like personality of one of his characters, the often-testy Mrs. McGarrigle, while Borsh says that a couple of jokester underwear salesmen top his list of favorites. “We do funny accents and voices all the time in our daily lives for our friends,” says Borsh, “and we finally get to take all these little characters that we’ve kind of developed and use them in a play.”
“It’s the best experience ever,” adds Sokol.
Worrell has been directing Yoh productions since the early 1990’s, a few years after she, her husband, and their four middle and high school aged children moved to Vermont from Texas. She started out teaching English then took on a couple of plays a year. If working with young people in the dramatic arts was at first just an avocation for Worrell, over the years it’s evolved into a full-time, beloved commitment. Under her direction, the company puts on four or five stage productions each academic year, plus several other theatrical events. In December, the group provided entertainment for a Medieval Court dinner at the Woodstock Inn, and this spring the middle schoolers plan to host a “Meeting Shakespeare” experience for elementary students. In addition, “we’ve had some wonderful times with Speakchorus,” says Worrell of the chanting group modeled after the choruses in ancient Greek dramas, “we’ve been doing that for about fifteen years all over the place.”
And the Yoh program offers flexibility for students, who can opt for academic credit, if they are involved in all its aspects for an entire semester. But students can also choose to participate in fewer productions, or even just one. Worrell aims to create a program that weaves classics in with contemporary pieces. In the fall, for example, the players staged Eurydice, a re-imagining of a Greek myth, and Ella of the Cinders, an updated Cinderella, set in Mexico. The Thirty Nine Steps isn’t the only production scheduled for this spring. Clara Gray will appear as Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst, and the ensemble will stage their take on a Shakespeare favorite that Worrell has dubbed A Junkyard Night’s Dream.
Yoh members routinely rotate between on-stage acting and back stage responsibilities. For The Thirty Nine Steps, stage managers Dakota Bebo and Dylan Stuntz will be assisted by seventh graders Bella Brooks and Kristin Ramsey. Since moveable set pieces, sound effects, and lighting are particularly important to the intense action in the production, Worrell estimates that the stage crew will number fifteen or so dressers, prop and set managers, and other behind-the-scenes student workers.
The Yoh Players are named in honor of the late Robert C. Yoh, a former Woodstock Union High School history teacher. He was a writer of plays and poetry, says Worrell, he believed in the arts and incorporated them into his curriculum. It seems fitting that the eight students assembled for rehearsal in the theater also named for Yoh have, between them, been involved in over two hundred of the groups’ productions. “We take it seriously,” says actor Ewasko of theater, “we take it seriously as an art form.”
“And,” adds stage manager Bebo, “it’s fun.”