The Youngstown Playhouse presents "The 39 Steps"; Hitchcock SPOOF

By GUY D’ASTOLFO

dastolfo@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown Playhouse’s next production has dozens and dozens of characters but a cast of just four.

“The 39 Steps,” a fast-paced farce that spoofs the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name, opens Friday. The comedy ran for a record-breaking 1,135 performances on Broadway, winning two Tony Awards in 2008.

David Jendre is directing the production. His last directorial effort at the South Side theater was the 2010 sold-out smash “Chicago.”

Jendre’s cast consists of stage veterans John Cox and Candace DiLullo, who are fresh off “Romeo and Juliet” at the Playhouse, and Jason Green and Rob Morris.

Cox is the leading man. “He’s Hitchcock’s everyman, the one who gets caught up in the intrigue,” said Jendre. “He’s an innocent man in a tale of espionage, taken for guilty, but he’s not.”

DiLullo plays three different characters.

And Green and Morris? They play a combined 140 characters. “Well, we didn’t actually count them all, but it’s about that many,” said Jendre.

How do they do it? “Lightning-quick costume changes,” said Jendre.

The director described the play’s humor as “kind of like Monty Python — a very fast and furious comedy.”

Utilizing a mostly bare stage, the characters use just a few props — a table, chair, trunks and some free-standing doors — to create different locations.

“The cast frantically moves them around the stage,” said Jendre. “The trunks become a train, and ladders become Scotland’s famous Forth Bridge.”