The 39 Steps is a classic adventure novel by John Buchan, and an early but influential thriller by Alfred Hitchcock, and now a witty stage play paying irreverent homage to both. Richard Hannay is the dashing, pencil-moustached hero, unwittingly caught up in an espionage adventure when he tries to protect a beautiful, mysterious foreign agent… read more +

The first week of the Dublin Theatre Festival of 1964 was largely a bleak affair. Reviews in the English papers were mostly negative, and Irish theatre faced “a scramble to survive”, warned the playwright Eugene McCabe.