Stepping Out

Centrestage is very lucky to have the expertise in Maggie Wright as director, who is acclaimed for her directing skills and clever, successful productions.

Adding to the team is the very talented Anna Mortlock as choreographer. Anna herself is a highly accomplished dancer and dance teacher and will bring the tap brilliance to this hilarious comedy.

Stepping Out , which enjoyed a hugely successful West End run and won Evening Standard Best Comedy Award for 1984, is a warm and very funny play about the lives of a group of women(and one man) attending a weekly tap-dance class in a dingy North London church hall. As the play progresses, the class’s dancing improves to such an extent that by the climax, a grand charity show performance, they have been transformed into triumphant tappers!
However, the steps and routines are just the background for the real focus of the play, the relationships and interactions of these ten very different people:

List of Characters
Mavis – (played by Lyn Dorreen) 30’s -40’s, an ex-professional dancer, the teacher of the class. Her personal life is a mess but she really loves to teach.

Mrs. Fraser – (played by Pauline Hirst) 50’s or older, the class pianist and surrogate mother figure to Mavis. A crotchety, tee totalling spinster, temperamental – must be able to play the piano.

Lynne – (played by Rebecca Crowhurst) 19, eager to please, works as a nurse.

Dorothy – (played by Sarah Simpson) any age, anxious and nervous, works in the unemployment office.

Maxine – (played by Sarah Binks) a down-to-earth, loudmouthed shop owner, the best dancer in the class.

Andy – (played by Julie Ginn) 30’s, a professional’s wife who devotes herself to good causes but is – for reasons we learn about late in the play – repressed and on awkward terms with her body

Geoffrey – (played by Michael Sanders) 40’s, is an ineffectual insurance salesman, a widower who is taking lessons because they remind him of his late wife, who loved to dance.

Sylvia – (played by Carole Oliver) who is an overweight mum in her early 30’s. her husband is an officially unemployed blue collar worker who does odd jobs for people who pay him under the table. Brash and gum-chewing!

Rose – (played by Angela Howie ) early 30’s a voluptuous middle-class black woman, has a handsome husband and children who are rooting for her to perfect her moves.

Vera – (played by Karyn Shanks) 40’s or older is in excellent shape – her rich husband insists on it, even as he neglects her in favour of her teenage daughter, a nouveau-riche busybody.

Come along and enjoy a great laugh while witnessing fabulous tapping!

A performance not to be missed.

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