STAGE REVIEW : ‘Stepping Out’ Taps Into New Routines

“No, dear--your other left foot!” yells Mavis (Susan Barnes) as she leads her middle-aged tapsters through a routine in “Stepping Out” at the Pasadena Playhouse. You’ll love Mavis. You may not quite know what to do with the play.

Like his characters, playwright Richard Harris understands the general effect that is wanted, but has trouble putting it all together. He can be funny and he can be serious; but he can’t be both things at the same time. This makes for a lumpy evening.

The general idea is to tell us about the people who take Mavis’ once-a-week adult-education tap class--seven women and one man. The man (Don Amendolia) is terribly shy, but so are the women, underneath. Will they be able to rise to the occasion when Mavis tries to turn them into a tap company for a charity show?

Act I presents the situation as a bit of a cartoon, a North London equivalent of Robert Harling’s Deep South beauty-shop comedy, “Steel Magnolias,” a big hit for the Playhouse last year. We get to know Mavis and her klutzy gang, and decide that they are good sorts, really, even the tidier-than-thou Vera (Sybil Lines). The effect is, however, a bit bland. One kept wishing the time were 1942, so that Harris could bring in an air raid.

Act II delivers a whole crate-full of dramatic interest. (It arrives at about the same time as the hats for the amateur show.) Somebody has ratted on somebody’s husband; somebody’s stepdaughter may be having an affair with her stepfather; somebody’s plaster cast may hide a slashed wrist; somebody is pregnant. Suddenly the play is full of questions, which one rather expects will be dealt with.

Instead, we cut to the finale, where we find out that our friends did eventually learn to manage a cane and a hat at the same time. Sunday night’s Playhouse audience cheerfully took this as sufficient evidence that each of the characters had also achieved a major personal breakthrough--certainly that’s the gist of Roland Young’s smiling choreography.

But all we really know is that Mavis has finally drilled a routine into their heads. Where the new self-esteem comes from and how deep it goes, isn’t dealt with. A healthy chunk of the play is simply missing, either because Harris never wrote it, or because somebody induced him to cut it before it got to the West End and Broadway. Those who attend “Stepping Out” will have to take a good deal on faith.

The performers prove themselves all the way, however. Sandy Duncan was to have played Mavis, the dance teacher. Duncan is a joyous performer, but you wonder if she would have done as well as Susan Barnes in conveying the strain of running a class like this--the exasperation that a talented artist feels in the face of people who don’t have a clue as to what it’s about, yet who have to be cossetted if one wants to keep eating.

Barnes has a fine scene when she can’t keep the lid down any longer. There’s also a wonderful quiet moment when she puts on an old Artie Shaw tape and dances by herself in the dark, just for the pleasure of it. It’s a much deeper moment than the finale.

Amendolia directed the show, and also gives a beautiful performance as the bashful Geoffrey, a man who is almost not there. Without belaboring the point, Amendolia suggests why he is not there. Deborah May is less successful at showing us what is beneath the leggy Maxine’s wisecracks about her teen-age son, but then it’s tough role: Harris doesn’t seem to know Maxine very well himself.

Lines is fun as the compulsive Vera, a natural enemy to such free souls as Sheryl Sciro’s Sylvia and Gwen Shepherd’s Rose--but you know what they say about the Colonel’s Lady and Judy O’Grady. Janet Eilber perhaps overdoes the fears of the terrorized Andy, another tough call. Victoria Boothby is spot-on as the crosspatch pianist, Mrs. Fraser. In sum, Mavis’ gang are a likable bunch of clumsies and we’re pleased for them when they finally learn not to look at the floor, but the final scorecard on “Stepping Out” reads: Dance 10, Plot 3.

Plays Tuesdays-Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 5 and 9 p.m. and Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Closes July 16. Tickets $25. 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. (818) 356-PLAY. ‘STEPPING OUT’

Richard Harris’ play, at the Pasadena Playhouse. Director Don Amendolia. Scenery Larry Miller. Lighting Martin Aronstein. Costumes Dona Granata. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Production stage manager Theresa Bentz. Musical arrangements Peter Howard. Choreography Roland Young. With Susan Barnes, Victoria Boothby, Marsha Kramer, Laura Jillian, Deborah May, Janet Eilber, Don Amendolia, Sybil Lines, Sheryl Sciro and Gwen Shepherd.