Taking Steps
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Roland
Mark
Tristram
Leslie
Kitty
| Taking Steps | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 | |||
| Written by | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| Characters | Elizabeth Roland Mark Tristram Leslie Kitty | ||
| Date premiered | 28 September 1979 | ||
| Place premiered | Stephen Joseph Theatre (Westwood site), Scarborough | ||
| Original language | English | ||
| Subject | Relationships, farce | ||
| Setting | Three floors of an old house | ||
| Official site | |||
| Ayckbourn chronology | |||
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Taking Steps is a 1979 farce by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is set on three floors of an old and reputedly haunted house, with the stage arranged so that the stairs are flat and all three floors are on a single level (hence the play on words in the title).
There are six characters in the play:
- Elizabeth: Former dancer, retired as a result of her marriage; now in perpetual indecision about whether to leave her husband; her effort to do so sets off much of the action in the play
- Roland: Elizabeth's unappreciative husband; a businessman who is a major presence in the bucket industry; alcoholic
- Mark: Elizabeth's brother, attempting to save his one-sided relationship to Kitty and fulfil his dream of opening a fishing tackle shop
- Kitty: Arm-twisted into engagement with Mark; having left him at the altar once, she has been persuaded to come back to him after her arrest for suspected solicitation; feels trapped into always being part of other people's dreams (including Mark's fishing tackle shop)
- Leslie: Dodgy builder, on the brink financially; desperate to sell the house (currently rented) to Roland
- Tristram: Roland's solicitor; inarticulate and unassertive; unwittingly causes absolute havoc. For Ayckbourn, for all of Tristram's apparent ineffectuality, his is the central role in the play
Setting
The play is set in a dilapidated Victorian three-storey country house, reputedly a former bordello and said to be haunted by a deceased prostitute. According to the set design favoured by the author, all three floors are represented on stage at a single level, with the actors' movements between the floors expressed through mimed movement up and down flat staircases. This means that the downstairs living room, upstairs master bedroom and attic bedroom all occupy the same level, with actors frequently next to each other when their characters are on different floors in the story. (Stage exits lead to other off-stage rooms.) It takes place in London.
Unlike most of Ayckbourn's plays, which are written for the round but are easily adapted for the proscenium, Taking Steps is generally considered to be a play that only works effectively in the round. While the original Stephen Joseph Theatre production was staged this way, the subsequent West End transfer was an end-stage performance, which was considered by Ayckbourn to compromise the effectiveness of the three-floor setting. As a result, the eventual transfer to Broadway in 1991 and the return to London in 2010 both used theatres in the round.[1] (There is also said to have been an end-stage production of Taking Steps that actually did create a three-storey house on stage.[2])
The play takes place over two acts, both with continuous action. The first act takes place one evening, and the second act takes place the following morning.