THE chance to play Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps ultimately led actor and writer Patrick Barlow to create the West End’s longest-running comedy, and yet he ended up never appearing as the have-a-go hero.

Now in its fourth year at the Criterion in London and into its third year on Broadway, the Olivier and Tony Award-winning action thriller is on its latest national tour, returning to York Theatre Royal on Tuesday, following its sell-out run in 2008.

Yet the show came about serendipitously.

“I met producer Edward Snape by chance in the middle of the West End a few years ago and he asked me if I would like to appear in a stage adaptation of The 39 Steps as Richard Hannay,” says Patrick.

“He had had this idea for a four-person version based on John Buchan’s novel. I said I was interested, but I wondered why nobody had thought of putting the Hitchcock movie on stage. Edward said, ‘That’s a good idea! Why don’t you do it?’ So, the vision of myself playing Hannay rather faded away, and instead I decided I’d have a go at writing this new version.”

North Country Theatre artistic director Nobby Dimon had penned a small-scale stage adaptation already, and Patrick duly brought his comic skills to the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2005 to fuse Buchan’s spy-thriller novel, Hitchcock’s black-and-white film from 1935 and Dimon’s original vision into a helter-skelter new play.

“It’s a gripping thriller and moves at breakneck speed, but it’s also zany in a Pythonesque way,” says Patrick.

“There’s a dastardly villain, gunshots galore, but at the same time it’s a romantic love story with a handsome hero and no less than three beautiful heroines. It’s a rom-com thriller. It has it all.”

Patrick had a further reason for taking the Hitchcock route.

“As a child, I saw a version of The 39 Steps from the 1950s with Kenneth More in it; it was clumsy but it captured my 12-year-old imagination,” he says.

“Having completely forgotten about it until my conversation with Edward, I decided I’d study Hitchcock’s version closely, and that’s when I realised what a brilliant theatre piece it would make.”

He watched Hitchcock’s film repeatedly, then began writing the theatrical equivalent, working through Hitchcock’s storyline until he had captured all the details he needed for the stage.

“Most of the scenes are those from the film but I have expanded them, twisted them, added new lines, jokes, so while everything might appear the same as the film, if people look closer, they’ll see there are a few new layers,” he says.

As with his work for his two-man company The National Theatre of Brent, for whom he has played the Roman Army, the entire Russian people and 10,000 Zulus, the maximum joy for Patrick lies in “having only four people seemingly attempting the impossible”.

His inspiration for such comic mania comes primarily from the old-time comedians, such as Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton.

“They were my favourites because these were people whose acts were very precise. Nothing was out of place,” he says.

“I also loved and miss the old variety comedians, such as Morecambe and Wise or Tommy Cooper. There’s that extraordinary mix of insanity and reality in their work, and that’s what I set out to achieve too.

“In The 39 Steps, the four actors have to play 250 characters between them, and convince the audience that a step ladder is the Forth Bridge and running on three packing cases is a high-speed train chase – and because it’s simple it becomes funny.”

For added comedy, Patrick decided the theatre company should appear to be having its own problems in staging the show.

“So I wrote into the script little things to go wrong and introduced various apparent accidents into the performance, which are all, of course, meticulously planned. I could have played it straight, but I prefer the ludicrous,” he says.

• The 39 Steps, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; Thursday, 2pm; Saturday, 2.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568.