YOUNGSTOWN — Many of the early rock ‘n’ roll icons signed terrible recording contracts and made little or no money off of those foundational hits.

When they got out from under those bad deals, some re-recorded those songs with another label. The new company was happy to have familiar titles to sell, and the artists hoped to finally see some royalties from those tunes to which millions danced and sang along.

But no matter how hard they tried to make it sound exactly like the original, a bit of the magic was missing.

It’s not a wholly accurate or fair comparison, but the thought crossed my mind Friday watching Youngstown Playhouse’s production of “The 39 Steps.”

Patrick Barlow’s spoof of the spy story written by John Buchanan was staged there in 2012 and directed by David Jendre, who died in 2020. To pay tribute to Jendre, Johnny Pecano reassembled three of the four actors from that production and set out to recreate Jendre’s original staging.

Pecano has a thankless task. When the show works, he’s just recreating what Jendre did in 2012. If something doesn’t, he must have done something wrong, right?

The first act was stronger than the second on opening night, and my memory is too overpacked at this point in my life to argue whether this version equals the one from a decade ago (and an electronic library crash a few years ago keeps me from being able to see my original review). But Pecano does Jendre proud here.

Make no mistake, the 2023 version is a very funny production that deserved a bigger and more animated audience than it had on opening night. Laughter is infectious, and there’s a reason comedy clubs pack their tables so closely together. The Main Stage performance space was no more than a third full, and with the tiered pricing system implemented at the beginning of the season, they were scattered throughout the theater instead of concentrated toward the front.

Barlow’s adaptation is a play within a play. The audience is watching a production of “The 39 Steps” by a theater that is short on actors and money but overflowing with ingenuity.

It’s the story of an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Richard Hannay (John Cox) meets at the theater the mysterious Annabella Schmidt (Candace DiLullo), who tells him about a sinister organization known as “The 39 Steps.” When she turns up dead the next morning in his flat, Hannay goes on the run to prove his innocence and stop the Steps.

Alfred Hitchcock directed the 1935 film version. It’s a template he revisited several times in his career, and there are many HItchcock jokes in the script.

The best gags in the show are physical. Watching Hannay try to extract himself out from under Schmidt’s dead body is worth the price of admission alone, and Cox and DiLullo execute this ballet with perfection. There’s another scene later in the first act scene on a train that builds and builds to higher and higher comedic peaks.

Cox only plays Hannay. DiLullo also plays two other women he encounters on his quest — a stranger on a train and the wife of a Scottish farmer who provides him shelter.

The dozen of other characters all are played by Jason Green and Jeanine Rees, the only actor who wasn’t part of the 2012 production. Green and Rees sometimes have to play multiple characters in the same scene and sometimes play the same character at different moments in the same scene.

They work together as a team, and the fact that they are able to play multiple characters simultaneously with minimal costume changes without leaving the audience totally confused is a testament to their skills.

The action behind the scenes must be as frenetic as what happens on stage to pull off all the requirements of the production, and the crew and technical team handled the multitude of challenges flawlessly. The only glitches I noticed were the intentional ones that are scripted.

“The 39 Steps” gives theatergoers a chance to remember Jendre, one of the many talents who is a part of the Playhouse’s 98-year legacy, and appreciate the wealth of talent that’s still here.

agray@tribtoday.com