Taking Steps
by Alan Ayckbourn, 13-17 July
Taking Steps is a farce - lots of doors, pyjamas, mistaken identity and even a ghost. Our challenge is to fit a 3 storey Victorian house into the Bridewell, which, with a little reference to time and relative dimensions in space, we will manage with ease.
Roland, a successful businessman, wants to buy the house. A very nervous trainee representing his solicitors and the current owner - a builder - arrive to complete the deal. Also in and out of the house are his wife, a former (rather inelegant) dancer who is considering leaving him; her brother, who she is trying to bring in to help her and who is trying to retrieve his own fiancee who left him at the altar; and, of course, the fiancee herself.
Over the course of a single night and morning, the characters contrive to run up and down stairs, get locked in wardrobes, sleep with a ghost and consume abnormal quantities of whisky and sleeping pills.
Cast List
Mark: Friend of the family. Once in love with Elizabeth but gave way to Roland. Very boring. People fall asleep when he starts talking for long. Likes to discuss his own particular problems.
Elizabeth: Extremely neurotic. Very liberated. Refuses to be known as Mrs. Refuses to accept help from men. Beautiful. Ballet dancer.
Roland: Her husband. An arch-chauvinist. Heavy. Rich. Bullying. Used to getting his own way. Carries all before him except Elizabeth. Slightly mad. Made his fortune in buckets.
Tristram: Assistant partner in a firm of house agents: the ‘hero’. Very anxious to fall in with Roland’s wishes. Very shy of women. They render him speechless.
Kitty: Mark’s sister. A dark past. Now frigid as the result of awful event in the past with her first husband. Mark is still holding a vendetta against the swine!
Leslie: Son of Bill Bainbridge. The builder. Jovial schemer. Married. Gallant to the ladies. Patronising.
AUDITIONS DATES FOR TAKING STEPS WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT A LATER DATE
Director: James Newall
Producer: Amy Daw
Taking Steps, by Alan Ayckbourn
The Bridewell Theatre
Bride Lane Fleet Street
London, EC4Y 8EQ
13-17 July at 7.30pm
TICKETS AVAILABLE NEARER THE EVENT
