Andrew Borba, David McBean, Dana Green and Matt Walker

As I enter a rehearsal of McCoy-Rigby’s new production of the farcical hit The 39 Steps (adapted by Patrick Barlow from the Hitchcock movie), I’m greeted by a burst of laughter as cast member Matt Walker performs a difficult pratfall. The laughter is followed by the actor using an overzealous Cockney accent to ask for comment from director Jessica Kubzansky. After a long look and a sly smile, she asks him to repeat the move with an added degree of difficulty. Another burst of laughter from the entire room indicates a real joy of creativity in the hall.

Perhaps this supercharged atmosphere is to be expected when you combine the wild-eyed enthusiasm and physical comedy of the Troubadour Theater Company’s self-described “dictatorial diva” Walker with the intellectual potency and staging expertise of Boston Court co-artistic director Kubzansky. Add three highly trained classical actors (Andrew Borba, Dana Green and David McBean) along with La Mirada Theatre’s large-scale production values, and the ingredients look very promising. Whether they’ll combine perfectly through the short 2½-week rehearsal period will be seen on opening night, but the positive energy expressed by the director and actors is palpable.

Matt Walker

Though Walker spends the bulk of his professional life creating absurd, seemingly loosely scripted mash-ups of pop-music and Shakespeare, among other classics, he tries to leap out of his comfort zone as often as he can. “Troubie [shorthand for the Troubadour company] benefits because our people go out and do other stuff, work with and meet other artists. If you don’t go outside your world, you can’t keep being informed. I go whenever I can if the right thing comes along.” His relationship with McCoy Rigby included a long tour of Happy Days — A New Musical.

So when Kubzansky offered him multiple roles in the tightly scripted 39 Steps, he was immediately intrigued – though he was a bit concerned about the schedule, as he was still in the midst of his latest Troubie hit A Christmas Westside Story. He jokes about his level of exhaustion since he accepted the roles. “This show is a workout. I wish there were a few less steps than 39…Doing this show made we want to join a twelve-step program.”

Walker trained at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, but he also has classical credentials. “In 1992 I did Ariel [in The Tempest] for [director] Jules Aaron [at Grove Shakespeare] . He dressed me in a Michael Bolton wig, shirtless with tights on. I can still carry it off in a dark room with blind people.”

Occasionally Walker allows his serious side out — in this case as he discusses the extreme acting skills required to make this farce work. “It is super-stylized. There is an incredible amount of dialect work. David McBean and I play 15 different characters each: Scottish versus upper crust versus Cockney versus Irish. Usually an actor has one or two dialect voices that he can sort of put on like an old shoe and it fits. In this case, I have four different Scottish characters — how do I make them all sound different? That’s been where training and technique have been brought to bear from everybody. The discipline of an actor jumping from style to style keeps the acting muscles honed. .. I have already said in this process that I feel like the weak link.”

Dana Green, Andrew Borda, Matt Walker and David McBean

Walker is enjoying the discipline required for this production. “It’s like doing Noel Coward if all the wheels started to fall off. There is a note in the script towards the end that says, ‘A lot of the staging will require your actors to achieve a certain level of Olympian fitness.’ I thought, ‘Oh god, what have I gotten myself into?’ And that is certainly proving to be true – especially with such a short rehearsal process.

“It’s a slippery slope. You get great actors and only have to give them two weeks and they can do it. More rehearsal may make the actor feel more comfortable and discover more things, but in the landscape of the economy now maybe this is the wave of the future — just hire great actors and give them only two weeks.”  But short rehearsal period or not, Walker knows his reputation requires him to be zany. “I feel an obligation to be risky and to try everything. I feel like when the process is all said and done, if you haven’t been risky or out there, you might have missed something. This is such a disposable art form, we have to give it all we’ve got.”

Among the classical actors pulled into the craziness of The 39 Steps is Andrew Borba, who spends his summers as associate artistic director of New York’s prestigious Chautauqua Theater Company and the rest of the year appearing in major regional theaters across the country (including In the Next room or the vibrator play in 2010 and Dead Man’s Cell Phone in 2008 — both at South Coast Repertory).

This is his first time at La Mirada. “This play, for lack of a better word, is a hoot in the greatest way. It is like a Troubie show. It’s crazy. What a joy to do something this delightfully funny. But it requires so much. It will take, in a surprising way, whatever you can give it… Late ‘30s Hitchcock has this style to it, and the playwright really captured that style. To be able to play the style is really fun, and to be able to send it up is beautiful. There is magic in these four people trying to produce this play. It feels like a small theater with that ‘I’ve-got-a-barn-let’s-put-on-a-show’ feel to it. It has that true germ of creativity that sometimes is brilliant but often goes horribly wrong. We laugh in rehearsal, but there are so many times in rehearsals where awful things actually happen – where the prop sticks or the door doesn’t open or the cue’s late.”

Jessica Kubzansky

Borba had worked with Kubzansky once before and was excited to do it again. “Probably the best thing she gives us is an environment in which to work and play at the same time. She creates a world where we feel very confident in not only what we’re doing, but in taking risks. But she also gives us enough boundaries that we don’t feel like we’re just flying by the seat of our pants. She is also one of the smartest people I know. Jessica creates this trust that I think is vital in a theatrical experience. After the first read, we all looked around and said, okay we’re going to be great. Something about the gypsy nature of actors where you say, ‘Okay we’re going to all jump off this bridge right now. Let’s go.’ You can tell very quickly whether when you jump they will jump.”

Dana Green has also enjoyed jumping off the bridge with these actors and Kubzansky. Her experience is highly classical with four years at Stratford Shakespeare Festival to her credit and several productions with San Diego’s Old Globe. She desperately hoped she would land the three roles in The 39 Steps, but she was nervous about her ability to fit into the farcical style. Then she went to see Walker’s company.

“I got to see the Troubies last week, and I have never seen anything like that. It is so great to be working with a company — and Matt in particular — who have a background in physical comedy… and can give permission to the company. It’s always fun being stretched. That’s what we love about being actors and finding things we’re scared of or didn’t know we could do. I play only three characters — nothing compared to those guys. What makes it work is the style and trying to get into that film noir kind of period. That heightened style locks you into a character.” But Green doesn’t depend entirely on style. “Even in this I honestly hope that I play the truth of the scene and situation. You hope the comedy comes out of that.”

Dana Green

She had played Lady Macbeth for Kubzansky in a three-night ClassicsFest workshop at Antaeus last summer and hoped the director could see her as a comic actor. “Working with Jessica is amazing. She brings a sense of permission and exploration with a play that is so famous. This has been done all over the world. But we are starting from scratch and have permission to find what the play is for.”

Though he is the youngest and least experienced member of the team, David McBean is praised by each of his colleagues for his extraordinary ability to change characters and accents. He has been working nonstop in the San Diego area for several years, but when he saw a break coming, he leaped at the chance to work with Kubzansky. “Jessica was instrumental in creating an atmosphere where we all felt safe, comfortable. She led us in some actor-schmactor exercises where you get very comfortable with each other. We played games — they are silly, but you do joke together, laugh together, do silly things and end up being very comfortable and safe with each other. I pay homage to Jessica and her craftsmanship as a director.”

At the initial audition, he performed an excerpt from Becky Mode’s very American one-man play Fully Committed. But “I just changed all the accents so they would cater to this play. They called me back. I got to read with Matt which was so fun.” After being cast, “one thing we’ve all talked about is playing that line between honestly communicating with the other actor and the heightened reality. At times we acknowledge that heightened reality. You can’t get around that fact I am switching hats and becoming different characters, but when I become that different person I am playing his action, his intention, his desires, his wants – and, yes, his accent. Then I just have to switch.”

David McBean

McBean simply wants to sink into characters. “If I had the opportunity to continue doing theater the rest of my life, I would be content. But the one thing I don’t like about doing this work is the attention – I wouldn’t want to do film or television because I like privacy and like being anonymous. Funny, considering I am an actor. I don’t even like bowing. The play is over! ‘Guh-bye.’ But I do understand it is part of the audience experience.”

As the four actors praise Kubzansky,  she returns the compliment. “I can’t think of four better people to be locked up in a room with for this incredibly short amount of time in which to make this incredibly complex little play…I am in love with what I do. I love directing. It uses every little bit of me: my mind, my heart, my childlike wonder, problem solving, people management skills. I am not an actor and have never been an actor. I revere actors for the astonishing skill and bravery they bring…I know how to ask for things I can’t possibly do.”

It is this awareness of her limitations that makes her so willing to share tasks. “I am the kind of director who needs everyone on the team — I need the village. I am not the kind of director who sketches the set on a napkin and says, ‘Here, build this.’ I love the collaboration. Maybe it’s because I have great ideas, but I also know I have a room full of people with brilliant minds. My job is to harness the collective imagination.

“When directing I am not performing it in my head. My greatest skill is to see into text and intuitively understand it in my bones. I am not trying to play the part but to illuminate the rich three-dimensional life that I see and feel. It frees me — not wishing I was on stage. I am admiring the actors and wondering how to make it great. I know exactly how it should be played and how it wants to live, but my instrument of translation is not in my body, but in my mind. I know how to get it, but not show it. I am a wordsmith.”

Andrew Borba and Dana Green

Kubzansky keeps herself fresh by seeking work outside her immediate world as co-artistic director (with Michael Michetti) of the Theater @ Boston Court. But she takes that company’s mission with her wherever she works. She insists that her work be “inherently theatrical, textually rich and visually arresting.” She brings that imperative to The 39 Steps as much as to any other production.  “Good art begets desire for more good art. We are all doing such different things, it feels like collaboration, not competition.”

The 39 Steps, presented by La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and McCoy Rigby Entertainment. Opens Jan. 20. Plays Wed.-Thurs., 7:30 pm; Fri. – Sat., 8 pm; Sat.-Sun. 2 pm.  Tickets: $35-50. La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada. www.lamiradatheatre.com. 562-944-9801 or 714-994-6310.

***All The 39 Steps production photos by Michael Lamont