‘Taking Steps’ opens at Interplayers
Farce focuses on woman leaving husband
At The Pines, a supposedly haunted country house, a woman plots to leave her husband. Thus begins English playwright Alan Ayckbourn’s 1979 farce “Taking Steps,” which begins a two-week run at Interplayers Resident Professional Theatre today.
The play, directed by Rodger Sorenson, earned raves from a recent revival in London. The Observer called it a “riotously funny farce” that also “reminds us that farce at its very best is inescapably about something: in this case, women’s hunger for freedom and the difficulties of rational communication.”
The woman in this case is Elizabeth, whose husband, Roland, is negotiating to buy The Pines. Elizabeth invites her brother, Mark, and his fiancée, Kitty, to be on hand as she leaves her husband. Toss in a solicitor and the home’s owner, and you get six people spending a chaotic night and in the end getting what they all deserve.
Carolyn Lamberson