Stepping Out
the brilliant comedy by Richard Harris
This play, studded with lively tap dancing routines to music by Berlin, Gershwin, Porter and others, contains all the elements necessary for a truly memorable and thoroughly entertaining visit to the theatre. Stepping Out follows a beginners tap class, from hesitant start, to first public performance. It scratches at the surface of each character to reveal hidden secrets, hopes and fears in an entertaining mix of wit and poignancy; and was another ‘first’ for the Concept Players. At least half of the cast had never put on a tap shoe before in their lives.
Here are some of the hundreds of comments we had fed back to us. ‘The final routine was one of the best things I’ve seen your company do’ - ‘I‘ve seen this play quite a few times and never realised before how many tragic characters there are in it’ - ‘I laughed until the tears rolled down my cheeks’ - ‘Tremendous cast, not a weakness in it’. These, and the audience response - standing ovations at three of our performances – and calls for ‘encore’ at all (not that we could have given one, to say that we were ‘tired’ was a gross understatement!), led us to believe it was a great success. Not to mention fact that we actually made some money!
The play was great fun to rehearse, our dance classes (we had a lesson for an hour, then rehearsed for two or three more) were a bit like the twilight zone as we went through many of the same things as the characters in the play. We even had the rehearsal where the director lost her cool and left us looking pretty sheepish – though it has to be said, she wasn’t pregnant – it was just the heat!
Our thanks to our audiences who made us feel great – winner of the free prize draw for the run was Mrs Fay Price from Newport.
Words by Janet Holloway