TWO years to the week since its first delirious trip to the Theatre Royal, Maria Aitken’s uproarious production returns for another rollercoaster ride through John Buchan’s tale of murder, suspense and intrigue.

If you missed out last time, you may do so again because tickets are hotter than the latest dance craze, but if you show the same kind of pluck and initiative as Richard Hannay, then seats may yet be yours – and you will be well rewarded by a dextrous show that grows funnier the more often you see it (not unlike a Berwick Kaler pantomime).

The spiffingly named Dugald Bruce-Lockhart plays Hannay to the manner born in a play that hitches the storytelling of Buchan to the thrills, spills and daring set-pieces of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 spy thriller and then entrusts everything to a cast of only four.

Hannay is in an emotional pickle in his lonely London pad, slumped in his leather armchair, with his pipe and pencil-slim moustache, in desperate need of… well, love, as it later turns out. More immediately, the dashing, clipped and proper fellow takes himself off to the London Palladium for some excitement, but not the kind of excitement that ensues.

The gun-firing, mysterious German in the box opposite him, Annabella Schmidt (Katherine Kingsley), demands he take her home, only to drop dead in his lap with a knife in her back. And so begins Hanney’s flight – or rather train ride – to Scotland, as a man wanted for murder and in need of crucial information to extricate himself from such accusations.

Policemen, secret agents, a farmer, a mysterious professor and assorted women stand in his way, nearly all played at dazzling speed and with judicious comic timing by the tall and short combination of Richard Braine and Dan Starkey. Kingsley pops back too, as an alluring femme fatale and a shy but obligingly helpful farmer’s wife.

Patrick Barlow’s breathless stage adaptation has grown even more breathless under Aitken’s direction, the darker side of Hannay relegated pretty much out of sight, in favour of the theatrical sleight of hand being even more magical. From Braine’s perfectly timed execution of sitting in a chair that whizzes across the stage from behind him, to the swapping of hats and the bargain-basement re-enactment of Hitchcock’s familiar scenes, The 39 Steps is a joy from sombre start to happy ending, even fitting in a North By North West shadow-play spoof at one point.

Barlow’s dialogue keeps you on the edge, either suspenseful or in fear of a pardonably terrible gag, and his most winning decision is to burden the actors with battling against the odds, having to improvise props, move the furniture and keep their head above water, in the tradition of short-handed touring companies of old.

The twists and turns of this Hitchcock homage somehow go off without a hitch. Hopefully your last-minute pursuit of tickets will do the same.

The 39 Steps, York Theatre Royal, dashing about until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568.