The projected round silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock floats across a screen halfway through Cardinal Stage’s “The 39 Steps” as homage or perhaps a kind of blessing. At Friday night’s preview, director Randy White, his cast and nimble production crew created a fast-moving, ever-changing panoply of humorous delights.

Handsome, upper-crust bachelor Richard Hannay (Chris Vettel) suffers ennui after returning to his apartment after a long trip. Vettel with his sonorous British accent and unruffled manner easily slips inside the role of a man who has spent his life centered only upon his own wants and needs. But, alas, fate abruptly alters this life-trajectory when beautiful secret agent Annabella Schmidt (Nika Ericson) joins him in an opera box.

Played with bravura and an eager demeanor by Mike Price, Mr. Memory rattles off answers to trivia and with each correct response (all of them) raises his arm bombastically as a salute. A pistol shot reverberates through the London Palladium, and Hannay’s life on the run soon begins.

Vettel does a fine job as Hannay, but he has the advantage of playing only one character all evening. The three other actors must switch between roles all night, sometimes at dizzying speeds. They succeed well at this difficult task. Kudos to costume designer, Christy Clark, and dresser, Taylor Harmon, who facilitated fast wardrobe changes in costumes that capture London and Scotland during the early 20th century.

Secret Agent Annabella Schmidt, sexy and bold, spends the night at Hannay’s place, but greets him in the morning with a surprise — a knife sticking out from her dressing gown.

Ericson, in a series of grunts, pulls off a secrets-revealing death scene that is immediately countered by Vettel who hilariously pythons out of his easy chair because alas, Annabella, has died in his lap. The night is full of amusing slapstick including one superfast exchange of hats (and characters) on the train to Scotland. Visually, the play turns cinematic with pulsing lights and a ladder climb that makes the audience believe they are observing a rapid chase across a moving train’s roof.

As the villain with a missing-part-of-a-digit, Professor (of course!) Jordan, Paul Hansen reeks of evil — threatening to kill our hero Hannay, as a twenties’ party blasts in the next room. Price, who besides switching among characters, designed the sound to fine effect here, with party sounds turning on and off each time the Professor’s door opened or closed.

All the accents were managed well, Vettel’s always spot-on, and Ericson also did particularly well with a sassy spy’s heavy Eastern European accent, followed by a country wife’s thick Scottish brogue, to a London lady’s proper English.

Of course, what would a Hitchcock mystery be without a love story? Or perhaps a couple of them? Hannay shares an intimate chat with the country wife, who warns him to escape and gives him her own husband’s coat with its hymnbook in the pocket. And a chance encounter on the train leads to a long kiss with Pamela who appears later literally attached to Hannay’s wrist.

At an inn where the owners promise to keep mum about your secrets, Price and Hansen hilariously play a married couple, one nearly taciturn, the other extremely garrulous. In his third or fourth role as a woman (who can keep track?), Price elicits laughs as the wife who needs to be translated for the uncomprehending Brits.

In a Scottish band scene after a political rally, White employs the rear projector again to good effect.

My one caveat with the play was that sometimes the darkness was too encompassing and created several moments of confusion, but certainly it gave the feel of Scottish moors during an escape.

For a delightful evening of escape, go see this Cardinal production. While laughing hard, you’ll enjoy trying to solve a complicated mystery.

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