Were you familiar with the material before starting rehearsals?
Shane: I had actually read the book in school. It was one of those assigned books, so it was vaguely in the back of my head. It was an exciting book; a thriller that set the tone for so many thrillers afterwards. I hadn’t seen the film until recently, I watched it and realised how closely the play is taken from the film.
David: I have not read the novel. I got halfway through the movie — I need to watch the second half — but there’s a lot of the movie in the play. A lot of lines have just been lifted from the play. As it stands now, [the play is] a spoof on Hitchcock films, pretty much. If you know any Hitchcock films, then you will get what this play is trying to do.
What about the idea of playing over 100 characters got you on board?
Shane: I’m still racking my brain around that [chuckles]. Actually, you could argue that this is very suited to us because we can change physicality and voices pretty quickly. But you’re memorising dialogue at various degrees for many different characters. And for me, that’s a challenge because my brain is having to lock into different people each time. It’s not just memorising one character’s dialogue. That’s my big challenge. That’s the freak out for me.
David: Well, we are physical performers. We are physical actors. And to embody so many characters just only vocally is very, very challenging for me. The Scottish accent is… I am massacring the Scottish accent [laughs]. It’s painful at the moment, but I hope the audience will give us a little bit of leeway because we’re doing so many different characters and voices and accents. We’ve been saying our own lines for 33 years, so it’s really pleasant doing somebody else’s lines.
As the Umbilical Brothers, you’re known for blending precision, physicality, and comedy — how have those skills shaped the way you approach The 39 Steps?
Shane: That’s the challenge of the play itself. It’s serious, but it’s also extremely silly, just because of the very notion of playing so many characters and the desperation of having to get into position for all these different characters. That’s an element of the comedy. So the challenge for us, and as Damian [the director] has pointed out, is to balance the craziness with the story, the serious story that’s underneath and the relationship with the two leads. You know, we can impinge on that, but we can’t just override it with the madness. That’s our challenge, but it’s still a lot of fun. There’s that extra step doesn’t have to be taken in the relationship between us. We already understand each other. We appreciate each other’s strengths and we know each other’s weaknesses so we can help each other out that way. Which is always a lovely thing; it’s always been an intuitive relationship between us. It’s always been creativity within limitation.
David: Yeah, it is a play. But it don’t forget, it’s a movie on a stage. And so within that there’s a car chase, there’s a train chase, there’s a plane chase, which is planes, trains, and automobiles. There’s all of those things on the stage. And there’s only one way to show to the audience that that is what’s happening, and that’s extremely physical.