This morning I awoke to the news that a mysterious stranger
on a bike had detonated a device in Manhattan’s Times Square. No casualties, no damage except some
shattered windows and, oh, train delays, an occurrence that doesn’t usually
require an explosion, but that’s another trauma.
Like
something out of a movie the event served to rattle our already dangling
nerves. Our mayor vowed, “…the coward
who did this will be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Well, Mayor Bloomberg, it’s NYC’s third
suspicious bombing in recent memory (following similarly dramatic, if benign
attacks on the Mexican and British Consulates) and precious little progress has
been made—who yah gonna call?
May I venture
a suggestion? Over at the American
Airlines Theater resides a man who might be up to the job. His name is Richard Hannay, and he’s the
hero of The 39th Steps, a loopy, grand piece of high
comedy that pays homage to Hitchcock, espionage and the movies with the kind of
imaginative staging and visual effects (a heaven-sent mash-up of high and
low-tech) that surprise and tickle our funny bones like an avalanche of
feathers.
Richard
Hannay is the classic Hitchcock hero: handsome to a lock-jawed fault, hapless
and ingenious in the same breath. He’s
always the smartest person in the room, even if he himself doesn’t know it, and
his ability to slide in and out of jams and—spoiler-alert: windows—would be the
envy of any veteran police detective, or Scotland Yard, FBI or CIA agent.
Currently he’s embodied by the fine
Charles Edwards, recreating his role from the original London production, and
his work, as well as that of Jennifer Ferrin, Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders,
is beyond reproach. Isn’t Bloomberg stepping
down soon? I say throw Richard Hannay’s
hat into the ring. I’ll bet he can take
down a skulking terrorist in a gray hoodie…but wait—isn’t there some sort of
rule against electing non-native Americans as Mayor? Quick, someone check and get back to me.