Laughs, cheers and humanity too

STEPPING OUT, Oldham Coliseum
THERE is a movie of this venerable comedy play, its location moved from a British church hall to the US, its dance instructor not a former chorus line dancer but a former Broadway star played by Liza Minnelli; its dismal failure obvious.

Which leads to one simple conclusion: don’t mess with a good idea.

When you watch it again for the umpteenth time, especially in a production as generally likeable as this — you realise that it is the Calendar Girls of its time: the little, unassuming play that could; in some ways the plucky British, low-rent equivalent of the horribly overblown A Chorus Line.

There has been a tendency over the years to treat Stepping Out as a rather forced comedy full of caricatures: fat, tarty Sylvia, distressed victim Andy, DHSS wallflower Dorothy, shy nurse Lynne and so on.

But the play is more than that: sure, there are lots of laughs — it’s what the play is for. But when played with the right weight, these characters have real life and humanity too.

Kevin Shaw’s production for the Coliseum is a bit of both worlds: both charmingly underplayed and occasionally overdone, with the emphasis, luckily, on the former.

The church hall is tattily accurate, the playing (and worldly sarcasm) of Mrs Fraser (Ruth Alexander Rubin) perhaps a little downbeat, the dancing perhaps a bit too poor to start with — these people are positively disabled at the start — and the saintliness of teacher Mavis (Nicola Bolton) a little too saintly.

But over the course of the evening there are plenty of chances to warm to the players and the characters, to forgive excesses and let the pleasure of the whole thing wash over you.

This Stepping Out is an evening with plenty of fun from a likeable company. We laugh along with the would-be dancers, not at them, and cheer them on in their sparkly finale.

Bolton is a commanding if low-key leader, but Kate Coogan is brilliantly cast as busybody Vera, who knows everyone’s business but apparently doesn’t realise her own dark family secrets.

Catherine Kinsella is, for a change, cast not as scatty young comedy character but as victim, while Emma Matthews as Sylvia, Ben Stock as the lone male, Geoffrey, Susie Fenwick as trader Maxine, Tania Mathurin as happy Rose and the rest give great value for your money.

It runs until April 2.