When it played London last year, the stage show The 39 Steps bore the full title John Buchan's The 39 Steps, in reference to the author of the 1915 spy novel. But now that it's on Broadway, the show is called Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, a belated acknowledgement not only that the novel is only remembered now as source material for the 1935 Hitchcock classic, but that the play, by Patrick Barlow, is more an adaptation of the movie than of the book. Charles Edwards plays the hero who, in search of "something mindless and trivial" and "utterly pointless" heads off for a night at the theater and winds up pursued by villains while handcuffed to a snarling blonde. Circling around him are an actress (Jennifer Ferrin) and a couple of actors (Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders) who, slipping in and out of multiple costumes and characters, constitute the whole cast. Reviewing the show in The New York Times, Ben Brantley credits the director, Maria Aitken, and her company, with "using their cinematic template to celebrate the art of instant illusion-making that is theater. Much of the show’s pleasure comes from being in on the magician’s tricks even as, on some primitive level, you accept them." (Brantley also notes that while the play endeavors to be its own thing — the actors aren't doing impressions of the actors who originated their parts in the movie, for instance — many of the best lines, "and more surprisingly, the raciest", are carried over directly from the screenplay.) In the context of what passes for Broadway entertainment in this vultures' age, what's really striking about this approach is how much more fun it sounds than the big musical versions of Young Frankenstein and The Little Mermaid, which count on the audience's nostalgic impulses to lure them into the show and then, lacking any fresh approach to the familiar old material or much showmanship, try to impress viewers by practically burning money on the stage. Perverse ingenuity trumps pointless bludgeoning spectacle. Sir Alfred would approve.