Taking Steps

KEITH CUTLER

Taking Steps

Little Theatre

Sheringham

Alan Ayckbourn's domestic comedies are renowned for their ingenious staging, often involving split sets and overlapping action.

This play has a single set, representing the lounge, main bedroom and attic of a dilapidated, reputedly haunted Victorian house with action taking place in each room simultaneously. Impossible, you may think, to maintain the illusion. Not with Ayckbourn's and the theatre company's inventiveness, however.

All the action takes place on a Friday night and the following morning, after ballet dancer Elizabeth Crab (Sarah Gale) decides to leave her successful businessman husband Roland (Tim Machin) after three and a half months of marriage. She insists that her departure note is approved by her brother Mark (Sebastian Armesto). He has his own problems, as his fiancée Kitty (Nicola Rabi) has been arrested for soliciting.

The subsequent complicated action has to be seen to be believed, as the characters career down imaginary stairs and landings. Taking Steps is a consistent, hilarious, farcical comedy ingeniously conceived and brilliantly acted under the direction of Seymour Matthews.

Keith Cutler