Stepping Out
Charles Cryer Studio
Theatre, Carshalton

***

THE members of the relatively new Chase Theatre Company have established themselves as class players with a variety of stretching plays to their credit.

Here, they go one step further with the popular Richard Harris comedy about members of a North London tap dancing class.

As the play unfolds, we find out something about their home lives and the sadness which lies behind many of the smiles and we watch as they develop from hopeless tappers into being proficient enough dancers to take part in a charity show.

It’s the sort of piece many of us can identify with, joining a class to get away from our humdrum lives for a couple of hours each week, and the company find most of the comedy and pathos in the piece under the direction of Denis Steer.

A lot of the laughs stem from Sylvia, a large lady who is self-conscious about her weight by always making fun of it.

How Vykki Cartwright was cast in this role is a mystery since she is a petite actress with an enviable figure.

But she captures the spirit of the woman with her chirpy humour and infectious dirty laugh.

Clare Gollop shines as brassy blonde Jewish lady Maxine, though she does sound a little too much like Fagin occasionally.

I loved her exuberance and the way she keeps that smile beaming while she dances.

And Mo Lawton is a great Vera, the committed cleaner-upper whose snobby busybodying is a way of hiding the sadness of her own empty life. She has just the right vocal tone.

Toni Frost plays the class tutor Mavis and could do with a little more verve and variety of pitch in her delivery, though she has done an excellent job of choreographing the play. The rehearsal scenes when everything is going awry are a riot.

Sue Davids is an enjoyably brusque pianist Mrs Fraser, Alan Webber the dithery single male Geoffrey and Melanie Henry is a bubbly Rose.

The other quieter characters are harder to make an impact with.

Catherine Webber manages to evoke sympathy and irritation at the same time as neurotic, battered Andy and Kate Strafford is the sweet and capable nurse Lynne who knows Andy’s secret.

Hardest of all to make convincing is Dorothy as the script conveys her as a real dimwit, repeating the ends of other people’s sentences and locking an unfashionable geek.

Happily, Becky Owen survives against the odds.

Continues to Saturday.

Diana Eccleston