Performance: Killer joke in 'The 39 Steps'

Hitchcock would have liked this. The portly master of suspense had a good sense of irony about himself, so it is not hard to imagine the puckish corners of his mouth curling were he to watch the theatrical spoof that has been made of "The 39 Steps."

This stage confection, conceived by Patrick Barlow and adapted from both Hitchcock's 1935 film and the earlier novel by John Buchan, swirls four actors through dozens of characters to retell a spy thriller in slapstick vocabulary.

Not that it's all pratfalls and cream pies. The gambit requires deft subtlety, for as the Wicked Witch pointed out (yes, I know, different film), "These things must be done delicately or you hurt the spell."

Joel Sass' staging of "The 39 Steps" at the Guthrie Theater gets the formula right, with crisp acting and whimsical stagecraft. Robert O. Berdahl, Jim Lichtscheidl, Luverne Seifert and Sarah Agnew act with the focused commitment necessary for burlesque. A perfect example is Agnew and Berdahl, their characters on the lam and handcuffed together, tangle on a fence rail for what seems hours. Ridiculous situation, played for keeps. Perfect.

The tone is set right off. Berdahl plays the hero Richard Hannay, who, bored in his London flat, steps out to the theater (beautifully represented in Richard Hoover's Victorian proscenium and opera boxes). This whim twirls him into a nightmare. Hannay meets Agnew's mysterious spy -- channeling Marlene Dietrich by way of Madeline Kahn. She seeks refuge in his apartment. After spilling secrets to him, she is killed.

Hannay heads for the highlands, spending a night with farmers -- a dimwitted romantic Agnew and a gimlet-eyed feral Lichtscheidl. Hannay eventually crosses paths with a flamboyant villain (Lichtscheidl again) and -- shaggy dog story made short -- escapes peril, hooks up with an ingenue and gets back to London, where we learn the identity of "The 39 Steps."

Lichtscheidl and Seifert do the heavy lifting, often changing characters between lines -- with the aid of only a hat or coat or accent. It's a joy to see Agnew working her pure comic chops again and Berdahl's Hannay -- the straight man -- keeps pace with it all.

The Guthrie's technical designers exquisitely execute the piece's homemade charm. Michael Sommers creates a shadow-puppet sequence with Daliesque verve; Amelia Cheever's costumes (and the backstage dressers) deserve a shout, and whoever is responsible for that flock of sheep? Well done.

It can tire you out, all this action. But it's a good tired, one that rekindles our faith in theater's capacity to squeeze new life from old forms.