CANCELLED: Taking Steps

The British comic master Alan Ayckbourn shakes up a delicious cocktail of mismatched lovers, dirty dancing, bad hair and real estate, in this ingenious play, a hilarious farce that entertains on so many levels. Roland, a hard drinking tycoon, is considering buying a dilapidated three storey Victorian house, reputedly a former bordello and said to be haunted by a deceased prostitute. His solicitor, Tristam and the vendor, Leslie, a builder, arrive to complete the deal. Also in the house are Roland’s wife, Elizabeth, a frustrated dancer who is always considering leaving him, her brother Mark, and later, the brother’s reluctant fiancee Kitty, who is uncertain whether or not to run away. In the course of one hectic night and morning, with continual running up and down stairs and in and out of rooms, these characters, each immersed in a personal problem, try to sort themselves out. The first act curtain finds the solicitor in bed with the wife thinking her to be a ghost and the fiancee inadvertently shut in the attic cupboard by the distraught tycoon who has taken refuge in the spare bed. All this takes place in a highly ingenious and original setting in which all the rooms, passages and stairs are on a single level.