The 39 Steps - The Everyman, Cheltenham

Friday 15th January 2010

Fact is sometime stranger than fiction and that’s certainly true at The Everyman next week.

The classic spy thriller The 39 Steps arrives at the Regent Street theatre on Monday.

It’s got a handsome hero performing daring acts of espionage and meeting beautiful women and double-crossing agents.

But even so, it struggles to match the real-life experiences of the lead actor’s great uncle.

Dugald Bruce Lockhart plays Hannay and is the great nephew of Robert “Bertie” Bruce Lockhart.

Bertie served as British Vice Consul in Moscow from 1911 to 1917, and was sent home just before the October revolution on account of an unsuitable extramarital affair.

Bertie returned in 1918 as an unofficial representative of the British Government to the new Bolshevik leaders.

During that year, he was revealed to be a secret agent and implicated in an attempt to assassinate Lenin when the new Russian leader was shot at point blank range.

The plot was dubbed the Lockhart Plot and Bertie was imprisoned in the Kremlin.

Dugald considered following a similar career path when he was younger.

“I studied German and politics because I thought the Foreign Office was going to be my calling. My father worked there, too,” he said.

“I ended up becoming an actor but at least, playing Hannay, I got to do it my own way.”

The 39 Steps brings Dugald back to the Everyman, where he starred opposite Greta Scacchi in Deep Blue Sea. The multi-award winning production is based on the 1935 Hitchcock movie rather than the original book by John Buchan.

The show runs from January 18-23. For more details call 01242 572573.