A LOCAL amateur theatre company is bringing one of Alan Ayckbourn’s most “ingenious” plays to the Worcester stage.

The Swan Theatre Amateur Company is staging Ayckbourn’s Taking Steps complete with split-level set.

He wrote the play in 1979 after deciding “to write something for fun”.

The play is set over 24 hours and allows us to see what is happening on all three floors at once in The Pines, an old Victorian house.

Once an up-market brothel, it is now reputedly haunted by ‘lady of the night’ Scarlet Lucy.

As Roland and Leslie negotiate the sale of The Pines, hampered by their incoherent young solicitor Tristram, in other rooms we see that Roland’s wife, Lizzie, is preparing to leave him and her brother Mark is bringing his fiancée Kitty to stay overnight in the attic.

Director Ann Moore described the set as a “three-dimensional puzzle” and said it was rarely done by amateur companies.

But she said Worcester audiences were unlikely to have seen anything like it before.

She said: “The dialogue is so wonderful and the characters are so well drawn, for a director it’s like directing three plays at once.

“The staging has all come together very well as Ayckbourn gives a draft outline of what it should be like.

“We’ve been rehearsing for a few weeks now and we’re still laughing. I’ve got such lovely actors who are so great for the parts and we’ve just had fun right from the beginning.

“I think Worcester will like it.

It’s improbable but believable.”

The show runs at the Swan Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday, May 22-26.

Tickets for the show cost £7 on the first night and £9.50 thereafter (concessions £8, students £5) and are available from the Worcester Live box office by calling 01905 611427 or at the Swan Theatre on the night. Performances start at 7.30pm except on Thursday, May 24, when the visit of the Olympic Torch relay to Worcester will mean an 8pm start.