CityLife

Taking Steps

Oldham Coliseum

February 18, 2012

Thirty-two years after it was first performed at The Grange, the Alan Ayckbourn farce Taking Steps is back.

The Oldham Coliseum production is part of the Out And About season while the theatre’s Fairbottom Street home is being refurbished.

But being staged just down the road the The Grange Arts Centre takes nothing away from this hilarious and beautifully performed play.

Set over three floors of a crumbling Victorian house, Taking Steps explores how the six characters are all taking steps in their lives towards a different future. Elizabeth (Jackie Morrison), above, wants to leave her husband Roland (John McAndrew) and Mark (Ben Porter) saw his fiancee Kitty (Maeve Larkin) leave him only to return at the start of the play. Leslie (Martin Miller) wants to sell the wreck of a house to Roland and there’s Tristram (Antony Eden) who, well, isn’t sure what he wants.

If it all sounds a bit too much like real life then you needn’t worry – it’s laugh-out-loud funny and extremely well written and acted.

Performed in-the-round, as Ayckbourn intended, the clever use of the ‘flat staircases’ and specific gaps for doorways gives the sense of the characters moving between the attic, bedrooms and living room.

In fact, it is hard to see how Taking Steps could be easily translated onto a traditional stage. The dialogue is clever, quick, easy to follow.

This rare offering by Ayckbourn of farce in its purest form is well worth a trip out of town to experience.

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Taking Steps is on at The Grange Arts Centre, Rochdale Road, Oldham until March 10.

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