Rita Simons, Harriet Thorpe, Hayley Tamaddon, Leanne Jones and Wendi Peters will star in a new UK touring production of Richard Harris’s much loved play Stepping Out.
Opening at the King’s Theatre Portsmouth on 5 September 2022, the show will play venues in Dartford, Cardiff, Cornwall, Peterborough, Barnstaple, High Wycombe, Cheltenham and Eastbourne.
Stepping Out won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Comedy when it originally opened in London’s West End in 1984 and the film version in 1991 was directed by Lewis Gilbert and starred Liza Minnelli and Julie Walters.
Richard Harris has worked with the team on this new stage production to update the play and set it in the 2020s. Mavis, a former professional dancer, teaches a troupe of adult would-be tappers, but before the dancing starts, she must mediate the drama that erupts between this group of students of different ages and from disparate backgrounds until love and friendship unites them all.
Hayley Tamaddon (Emmerdale, Waterloo Road, Coronation Street) plays Mavis; Wendi Peters, who is best known for her role as Cilla Battersby Brown in Coronation Street plays Vera; Rita Simon plays Maxine and is best known for playing Roxy Mitchell in EastEnders; Playing Dorothy is Harriet Thorpe, who is best known for her roles as Carole in The Brittas Empire and Fleur in Absolutely Fabulous; and Olivier Awards winner Leanne Jones (Hairspray) plays Sylvia.
Also in the cast will be Elizabeth Power as Mrs Fraser, Deborah Tracey as Rose, Charlotte Bloomsbury as Andy, Nicole Deon as Lynne and Tom Kanji as Geoffrey.
Stepping Out will be directed by Dan Phillips and choreographed by Joanna Goodwin, with set and costume design by Cory Shipp and sound design by David Hart for Seventh Wave Audio.
Tickets are now on sale.
