If committing to Ensemble’s upcoming trilogy of Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests sounds a little daunting, this 1979 farce is a good taster of the master British playwright’s style.
Across three floors of a supposedly haunted Victorian mansion – which quickly falls apart; this is farce, after all – unwitting characters find their lives and relationships falling to shreds.
When it was revived in London in 2010, The Guardian described Taking Steps as “one of the Ayckbourn plays that got away,” and it hasn’t had a major production in Australia since the early '90s.
Ensemble’s Artistic Director Mark Kilmurry has a history of sold-out Ayckbourn productions at the Kirribilli-based theatre (Absent Friends and Relatively Speaking). He directs a cast of Sydney theatre stalwarts and relative newcomers, including Emma Harvie, Peter Kowitz, Drew Livingston, Simon London, Christa Nicola and Andrew Tighe.