Murder, Mystery, Comedy Combine For Hiliarity In Downtown Crystal Lake Sunday

On Sunday (May 8)  at 3:00 pm, The 39 Steps will be performed at Raue Center For The Arts in downtown Crystal Lake.  Alfred Hitchcock’s award-winning The 39 Steps is Broadway’s longest-running comedy thriller.  Performed by a cast of four, the play follows a man with a boring life as he meets a woman with a thick accent who says she’s a spy.  When he takes her home, she is murdered.  Soon after, a mysterious organization called The 39 Steps is hot on the man’s trail in a nationwide manhunt.  Winner of two Tony and Drama Desk Awards and London’s Oliver Award for Best New Comedy, The 39 Steps is packed with laughs, thrills and over 150 unique characters.

The play’s concept calls for the entirety of the 1935 adventure film The 39 Steps to be performed nearly verbatim onstage, by a cast of four.  This often requires lightning fast quick changes and occasionally for them to play multiple characters at once.  Thus the film’s serious spy story is played mainly for laughs, and the script is full of allusions to (and puns on the titles of) other Alfred Hitchcock films, including Rear Window, Psycho and North by Northwest.

Sponsored by Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital and Countryside Flower Shop and Garden Center, tickets are $65, $62 and $30 and can be purchased online at RAUECENTER.ORG or via the Box Office at 815.356.9212 or 26 N. Williams Street in downtown Crystal Lake.