Estelle Painter took me to a Harley store to pick them out and fit them rather than build them herself. Quite an eye-opening cultural experience. The clothes do make the man, or try to. Les was such a bizarre little man trying to hide behind those leathers...

I remember Ian McKellan was in town doing his one man show somewhere else in the building, and he came to a dress rehearsal, the only person in the yawning dark. We Americans were a tad intimidated by the presence of so eminent a Brit in the house watching us have a go at British farce, despite our pretended nonchalance. Though one, (now Sir) Ian sounded like a full house, hooting, guffawing, choking with laughter. We knew the show would play after the first five minutes.

But my most vivid recollection of the play was my entrance in full motorcycle gear, helmet and all, looking for all the world like a bargain basement Darth Vader. I was to confront and be attacked by Cathy Albers' character who fancied herself a dancer. During the struggle, she got my head in a leg lock. Though I seemed perfectly safe inside the visored helmet, more than once, the struggle was very real. I could barely breath in the thing, and I'm sure my struggles seemed to Cathy like inspired acting. Suffocating in black leather and a sea of pink chiffon is not a fate for any fairly normal man...

Review

Cleveland Plain Dealer October 18, 1987:

Farce at Drury a step above usual opener by Marianne Evett

It might not have occurred to you that sucking on hard candy is intrinsically funny.

If not, I call your attention to Act II of Taking Steps, now on view at the Play House Drury Theater through Nov. 15, in which a group of harmless English types, having endured an incredible night of misunderstandings, have assembled in the living room either longing for a drink or fearing another one. The desperate hostess (Catherine Albers), passes out the sweets and for a blissful moment, there is silence, broken only buy discreet gurgling noises.

It is a moment of inspired silliness because the reality--the mingled discomfort and politeness at all cost--is absolutely true. And that is good farce: however ridiculous or far-fetched it may get, it always has roots in dead-pan reality.

It's tempting to say that this season opener is the usual, old reliable stuff--familiar faces onstage in familiar situations by a Cleveland favorite, English playwright Alan Ayckbourn. In fact, "Taking Steps" is better than that. It has style, coherence, energy that has not always been there in the past. Director Sue Lawless has helped actors make Ayckbourn's characters more than types, they are real people. Weird, maybe, but real.

Ayckbourn's plays always have a gimmick. This time, it's the set, a dilapidated three-story country house--except that it's all on one stage level. Richard Gould's set defines entrance hall and living room on the ground floor, the second floor master bedroom and a tiny attic bedroom. Connecting them are "flattened stairs," sections of the floor on which actors mime going up or down stairs.

It's visually fun (and a chance to show character visually--Albers, playing a flighty would=be dancer, always takes the "stairs" with a lilt) and meant tha tthings can be going on all over the stage. It also justifies the title, of course, although characterrs in the play take metaphoric steps (and missteps,) too.

There's Roland (Richard Halverson), about to buy this decaying mansion for his lovely wife; wife Elizabeth, however, feels stifled and is planning to run away to follow her own star. Her brother Mark--John Buck Jr., looking like an aging child with his thinning hair and wistful blue eyes--is a bor who affects people like a couple of Sominex tablets. But he has at last tracked down Kitty (Sharon Bicknell), the girl he loves, who ran away just before the wedding ceremony, and is set to fulfill his dream of opening a fishing tackle shop.

Everybody is good, although Wayne Turney as Leslie, the present owner of the house, is closest to pure shtick--but then Leslie is hardly subtle, zooming on in leather and studs like a "Starlight Express" runaway. Halverson is hearty as the alcoholic Roland, sniffing the air for booze like a benign retriever.

What gives the production a special lift, however, are wonderfully comic performances by Andrew May and Bicknell. May is Tristram, newly arrived from Roland's law firm to help close the house deal, blinking as if he has just hatched from some tall, thin egg. He is a warm-hearted, credulous and moral young man who seems unable to utter coherent speech. May's comic, awkward elegance reminded me suddenly of Cary Grant--no higher praise.

Bicknell, too, has seldom been funnier or more endearing, straw-colored hair in a collapsing topknot and frizz, clothes apparently thrown at her by a passing Salvation Army lorry, eyes goggling behind thick glasses, Kitty is as clotted in speech as Tristram, until desperation forces her into fantastic ravings. But under it all, she is sweet and vulnerable.

Estelle Painter's costumes are witty (especially a trio of identical pj's.)

Ayckbourn has turned recently from farce to bleaker examinations of contemporary life, but "Taking Steps" has no real shadows, even though at its end only two people are truly happy. The rest are stuck with familiar kinds of compromise. And yet--those foibles have made us laugh at ourselve.