While there is nothing in the slightest bit festive about Richard Harris’s award-winning play Stepping Out, its genial good nature and warm wit make it ideal material for a seasonal treat.
First seen in 1984, Stepping Out enjoyed a long West End run and was later turned into a star-vehicle film for Liza Minelli.
The setting is a dingy North London church hall, superbly created in all its telling detail by designer Jackie Dougan. Here we meet the eight members of a weekly tap-dancing class led by the good sort ex-professional Mavis (Amber Edlin) with the help of cantankerous pianist Mrs Fraser (Elizabeth Power).
Seven of the group are women, among whom the nervously buttoned-up Geoffrey (Richard Gibson) moves with some trepidation.
All sharply drawn in Harris’s script and in performance by the actors under the careful direction of Sally Hughes, the septet supply a broad range of human types, the study of which is the main purpose, and joy, of the piece.
We meet chavvy Sylvia (Janine Leigh), anxious worrier Dorothy (Belinda Carroll), confident fix-it businesswoman Maxine (Michelle Morris), reserved and timid Andy (Angela Sims), larger than life Rose (Yvonne Newman) – odd one out, like Geoffrey, being black – sensitive student nurse Lynne (Ruth Pownall) and bumptious snooty Vera (Elizabeth Elvin).
To the last is given many of the play’s funniest lines, owing usually to their tactlessness. “I used to be fat,” she tells the still fat Sylvia.
Will there be “proper music” (ie not Mrs Fraser’s poundings) she asks in respect of the charity show towards which the action builds, culminating in a fabulous display of the class’s tap skills?
4/5
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