‘The 39 Steps’ to Close in January

By Eric Konigsberg

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times From left, Charles Edwards, Jennifer Ferrin, Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders in “The 39 Steps.”

“The 39 Steps,” the longest-running play of any Broadway production to open in the last seven years, will conclude its two-year run on Jan. 10, 2010, its publicists announced Monday. By that date it will have played 771 performances in New York, starting on Jan. 4, 2008, and officially opening Jan. 15 at Roundabout Theater Company’s American Airlines Theater. It moved that April to the Cort Theater, and then, in January of this year, to the Helen Hayes Theater, where it will remain through its last months.

Charles Busch’s play “The Tale of The Allergist’s Wife,” played 777 performances on Broadway from 2000 to 2002, and “Proof,” by David Auburn, which began in 2000, lasted 917 performances.

“The 39 Steps” is in its third year of performances in London; a U.S. national tour will begin in November at the Shubert Theater in New Haven following a monthlong engagement at Seattle Rep. The play is based on both the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock movie “The 39 Steps” and the 1915 novel of the same name by John Buchan.