Hitchcock’s ’39 Steps’ a superbly acted production

Arriving in British cinemas in 1935, “The 39 Steps” was one of the earliest of his pictures to attain the imprimatur of a classic, and its Tony-winning 2008 Broadway adaptation — now at the Warner Theatre through the weekend — pays tribute not just to the second in a canon of wanted-man thrillers that would make Hitchcock a legend (“The Man Who Knew Too Much” beat it by a year), but to the more famous American productions that followed. There’re hoary shout-outs to “Strangers on a Train” and “Vertigo,” and more amusing visual nods to “Psycho,” “The Birds” and — in the best example of the production’s lo-fi aesthetic — a moment from “North by Northwest” that also recalls the climax of “King Kong.”

But what makes this show tick is its loving homage to the rickety enterprise of theater itself: Its hundred-odd parts are performed by only four actors, and scene changes are a self-referential ballet of flung aside costumes and props hurled on from the wings like runaway shopping carts. More sophisticated effects appear, too, but mainly as an excuse for jokes about their ill timing.

It works. The show has the elastic charm of a Road Runner cartoon, wherein gravity asserts not when the coyote overruns the cliff, but when he recognizes he has. The Scottish farmhouse (rear) window that Claire Brownwell (staying on from the Broadway production) offers Ted Deasy (dashing in the lead role that once belonged to Robert Donat) to leap out when the police come for him is nothing more than a picture frame. He at first tries to climb through it, but settles for a hula-hoop shimmy when it becomes apparent that on this stage anyway, gravity remains in effect.

Eric Hissom, so memorable in last year’s “Arcadia” at the Folger, is a hoot in the countless purely comic roles he assays here, and Scott Parkinson matches his dexterity. As directed by Maria Aitken, “The 39 Steps” is as breezy as the similarly movie-obsessed “As You Like It” she staged for the Shakespeare Theatre last fall was leaden.

This story is a chase after all, so it makes perfect sense that its most reliable gag comes whenever its four well-conditioned players pretend to be in transit: riding in an automobile down an uneven rural road, struggling across a moor in high winds, or galloping from car to car atop a speeding train. Rather than rely on a shuddering set or a giant fan, the actors supply their own synchronized bounce, relying on the strength of their limbs to make you believe.