TAKING STEPS. To 3 November.

Keswick

TAKING STEPS
by Alan Ayckbourn

Theatre By The Lake In rep to 3 November 2007
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 12 Sept, 3,24 Oct, 3 Nov 2pm
Audio-described 12 Sept 2pm
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

TICKETS: 017687 74411
www.theatrebythelake.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 August

Quite amusing rather than fully hilarious.
This 1979 comedy is a vertical version of Alan Ayckbourn’s earlier How the Other Half Loves (currently touring out of Bath). That famously intermingles two living-rooms, frequently with simultaneous action in both. Taking Steps plays on a flat floor events occurring on three storeys of a large house – something of a mansion given the photo blow-up backing the stage in Martin Johns’ Keswick design.

People keep coming to Roland’s house, but his wife is trying to escape. Both women are attempting to find freedom from their male partners, their attempts being repeatedly frustrated by unexpected happenings. With sounds misinterpreted through ceilings and floors, and the wrong people being in bed, there’s plenty of comic scope.

But despite the farcical bent the reliance on mimed doors and staircases provokes, Ayckbourn’s comedy remains founded on human nature. Performances here vary, between Allie Croker’s dancer Elizabeth, played with farcical stylisation and over-formal speaking (hard to believe this is the performer who’s devastating in Keswick studio’s Days of Wine and Roses), and Eddy York’s Roland. York plays this character, whose drink-reliant confidence needs some exaggeration, with admirable realism, but thereby loses some comic points.

The overall mix makes for a subdued impact, though one with several huge laughs and a fair amount of amusement (the two nights I visited the theatre when this was playing, it was sold out). What’s most unhelpful is the set. As with the Bath Other Half it leaves the firm impression Ayckbourn shaped his play to work best in-the-round.

The huge house-photo at the back can be ignored. But the mix of this and realistic sound effects for mimed doors opening and shutting, doesn’t establish a consistent convention (contrast the cunning ploy of the Orange Tree’s Sam Walters for his in-the-round farce productions, with necessary sounds being created in full view by a stage manager, complementing the action’s artificiality).

And blank units of furniture, whited-out but labelled ‘Chair’, ‘Bed’ etc. can work – as in the Blue Elephant’s Not Knowing Who We Are in June – but here they distract from the physical reality the actors create, muting the comic development.

Kitty: Lindsay Allen
Elizabeth: Allie Croker
Mark: Toby Gaffney
Tristram: Richard Galazka
Leslie: Greg Wagland
Roland: Eddy York

Director: Stefan Escreet
Designer: Martin Johns
Lighting: Nick Beadle
Sound: Matt Hall
Fight director: Kate Waters

2007-08-30 00:24:38