ROFL While Taking Steps

Christy Drogosch and Garland Lyons

By Tina Arth

Sunday, March 10: Lakewood Center for the Performing Arts was the scene of a small miracle – I saw a farce that I did not hate. In fact, I loved it! Alan Ayckbourn’s very British, utterly ridiculous Taking Steps, with a brilliant cast under the careful directorship of Brenda Hubbard, is simply hilarious. Although it may sound counterintuitive, clearly the trick to farce is to take it exceptionally seriously. Hubbard’s Director’s Notes specify that “as a form it requires great acting skill, a high degree of commitment to the moment, split-second timing and a certain kind of athleticism…” and the cast and director of this production delivered in spades. The result is an often side-splittingly funny show, deficient only in the plethora of “if only” moments that plague lesser attempts at the genre.

The story is satisfyingly absurd and revolves around six characters incessantly coming and going in a seedy three-story Victorian house that is reputed not only to be a former bordello, but also to be haunted by a long-deceased prostitute. Tenants Elizabeth and her husband Roland are in a mess – former dancer Elizabeth is in a stew, trying to decide whether or not to leave Roland, an alcoholic who has made his fortune in the bucket industry. Local builder Leslie hopes to salvage his flagging company by selling the house quickly to Roland – but he must have the approval of Tristram, Roland’s amazingly inept solicitor, to seal the deal.  Rounding out the cast are Elizabeth’s brother Mark and his ex-fiancée Kitty. Elizabeth has summoned her brother to comfort the soon-to-be abandoned Roland, but he is more concerned with convincing Kitty, who has been picked up for soliciting, that she should go through with marrying him.  The show’s title is, in part, an extended gag - all three stories of the house are actually presented on one level, so we are constantly watching characters mime climbing stairs, passing each other unnoticed on the (nonexistent) levels of the staircases as they move about. However, it also captures the indecisiveness of four very assertive, yet ineffectual characters and the real progress made by the seemingly meekest of the lot.

Christy Drogosch and Jeremy Southard, as the soon-to-be-split (maybe) Elizabeth and Roland, are a delightful mismatch. Drogosch reveals breathtakingly funny flexibility as she practices The Art of the Dance, literally bringing parts of the house down with her pretentious but awkward exercises and chattering incessantly with just the right faux-upper class, utterly self-absorbed British disdain for everyone around her. Southard as the cheerfully blustering and oblivious alcoholic does a fine job of growing gradually drunker in every scene, and he captures nicely the classless bonhomie of a formerly working class Brit who has made buckets of dough selling plastic buckets. Eric Nopom’s “Leslie” is at his best when we see the least of him – fully clothed and helmeted for his motorbike, he’s somewhere between The Fly and Darth Vader, but his lack of awareness gives the role a delightfully lighthearted menace. While Garland Lyons’ character, Mark, puzzles over why people always fall asleep when he talks to them, he has the opposite effect on the audience – whenever he opens his mouth we go on high alert to follow his circular reasoning and wait for the moment when his conversational partner nods off.

The real protagonists in Taking Steps are the hapless and loveable Shawna Nordman (Kitty) and Spencer Conway (Tristram). Nordman spends much of the play trapped in a wardrobe that can be taken to symbolize the entrapment of introverts in an extrovert’s world – her huge-eyed naiveté and halting delivery are perfect. Conway is so convincingly her male counterpart that we just know these two characters are meant to be together; their apparent inability to express their thought leads, ironically, to the only real communication in the play.  Conway’s tortured delivery and mobile face enhance the character’s crippling shyness, and make his final decisiveness, courage and decency all the more sweet.

The show’s production values echo the seriousness with which Hubbard has approached the show – Demetri Pavlatos’ set is gloriously dank, and even though the show is on one level we really feel that we have entered an attic whenever the action shifts to the “top” floor. Kurt Herman’s lighting also plays a huge role in both setting the mood and directing the audience to key moments and locations.

It’s impossible to express how utterly charming and hilarious I (and the rest of the audience) found this Lakewood production – do yourself a favor, grab a ticket, and see for yourself what can happen when farce is taken seriously!

Taking Steps is playing at the Lake Oswego’s Lakewood Center for the Arts through Sunday, April 7.