Análisis del libro "39 Steps"

the 39 steps is about a man called Richard Hannay who meets a secret agent who tells him about the 39 steps, but is murdered, the story shows his journey into finding out more about it.

There were many styles used such as multi role, pantomime, slapstick, mystery and comedy . There were 4 actors in total, of which 3 are relied on to play a number of different roles. Using the change of hats and quick change of costume to change character. This adds to the comical features. There is a lot of slapstick comedy and pantomime involved. The 39 steps had a lot of stock characters ( heroes and villains), narration and good audience interaction.

The scene I’m going to discuss about now is the train scene. Hannay boards a train headed for Scotland. When the train arrives in Edinburgh, Hannay learns that the body has been discovered in his flat, and the police are looking for him. In this scene there is the fat man. The fat man multi roles and plays 3 characters, policeman, conductor and a man running away from his wife.

When he was playing the man running away from his wife, he portrayed this by having a posh London accent, sat up straight, had very good posture. He showed he was upper class by holding his head high, almost leading from his nose, his eyebrows were furrowed, was looking around occasionally and his mouth was pursed. When the fat man was playing the policeman he changed his flat cap to a policeman’s hat to symbolise a change of character. He had a cockney accent, stiff body language and movement, his hands were behind his back, he was rigid, angry, he squinted his eyes and had a screwed up face. He waddled and stuck out his stomach. Then when he altered character again to play the conductor, he changed his policeman’s hat back into the flat cap used earlier to indicate the character change again in a swift movement, used more hand gestures and had a soft tone but a loud voice.

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