Review: ‘Step By Step' at Actors' Playhouse climbs comedic emotional mountains

Miami Herald

7 days ago

Three friends take off on a two-day mountain trek in a play that resembles a buddy road trip movie. The reason for their adventure? To travel the same path that their friend Rebeca, who passed away, loved so much. They are there in solidarity and as a tribute.
But the climb up is not without its challenges. Not one of them is a seasoned hiker. Each one carries baggage – more emotional than what they have stuffed in their backpacks. In 90 minutes, Monica (Anna Lise Jensen), Sophie (Elizabeth Price) and Paula (Kareema Khouri), will reveal obsessions, fears, and neuroses, ponder the meaning of life and death, their jobs and marriage, and come clean about their feelings for one another.
There are variations of Peter Quilter's play 'Step By Step,' now at Actors' Playhouse through Aug. 10, playing throughout the world in different languages. At the Coral Gables theater, this is the U.S. premiere of a version that had its world premiere in Barcelona as 'Paso a Paso' in 2022. It went on to be performed in Norway, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland and toured the Netherlands in 2024.
If the U.K. playwright's name doesn't ring a bell, two of his more than a dozen plays will. The most acclaimed was 'End of the Rainbow' a musical drama about the final months of Judy Garland's life, which garnered Renee Zellweger the Oscar for the movie version in 2019. Then there was 'Glorious!' about the world's worst opera singer, Florence Foster Jenkins, which became the subject of a film starring Meryl Streep.
Quilter's plays usually deal with women and grief, loss, growing older and have an arc that helps his characters gain a perspective that emboldens them to start anew.
'Step By Step' started as a man's journey called 'The Hill' where Sam, Daniel and Tony join for a climb in a memorial to their friend Gareth. It first opened in Prague in 2020. But during the pandemic, Quilter took 'The Hill' and turned it into a female three hander.
Monica, while the daftest of the three, is the most well-rounded character in the comedy and the one that gets the most laughs. Her biggest concern is marrying Graham while her friends – she even does it a few times – keep referring to him as her former love Gary, who ran off with her cousin. Freudian slips abound. It's Monica's final week of freedom before her marriage, something she's hoping the clean mountain air will make her realize that she can 'settle down and stop the endless pursuit of sexual conquest.' She doesn't seem to believe it and she's hardly convincing. Jensen milks the comic lines for all they're worth and a scene where she collapses on a tent that is graffitied with all the men she's had liaisons with inside, like notches on a bedpost, is perfectly over-the-top dramatic.
Sophie, the self-proclaimed White Lesbian in the group, can't get over a break-up with her ex. At the opening of the play, she's packed and repacked her backpack. She's neurotic and having what her friend Paula calls one of her 'spectrum' moments to which Sophie replies: 'Everybody's on the spectrum. I'm just on it a little bit extra.'
Her neuroses rage in full force when, out of the blue, her fear of clowns haunts her in the middle of the night on the campsite. Price, who's a frequent fixture on South Florida stages, manages Sophie with just enough anxiety and compulsion to not have her become an overbearing neurotic caricature.
Khouri, who was so enthralling in Actors' Playhouse's 'Caroline or Change' last season, stretches her comic chops here as Paula. When she realizes they've just hiked up one side of a mountain while a café and car on the other side could have produced the result just as easily, it's one of the most well-crafted comical deliveries in the show. Unfortunately, the author saddles the character with a joke about two prostitutes that seems left over from his man-comedy 'The Hill' but Khouri tackles the challenge with gusto and moves on.
While the 90-minute, no intermission format is enough time for the actual journey, what it doesn't allow for is a backstory. It's unclear how the trio met although there is a brief mention of becoming friends in college, How their friendship has endured is never explored. The loss of Rebeca isn't written in depth enough to anchor the theme of the play.
The author suggests music choices while Actors' Playhouse's production tosses in some of their own in between scenes– the requisite 'You've Got a Friend in Me' and 'Get By With A Little Help From My Friends,' and the addition of an arrangement of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah.' These breaks add to director David Arisco's smart pacing of the show along with his attention to the emotional rollercoaster he's made sure the ensemble conveys. The trio excels as an ensemble all the while defining their individual characters.
Brandon M. Newton's set is serviceable with different ramps for the actors to ascend and descend depending on entrances and exits. But the unrealistic depiction of a mountain trail creates a dissonance for the suspension of disbelief that we are accompanying these characters on a real journey. The back screen provides more reality with projections of the sky and clouds and nighttime scenes. Also having scene changes by stagehands, which could have easily been performed by the actors, contributes to the interruption of a seamless flow of buying into the reality.
Eric Nelson's lighting is bright in all the right places and dark in others and ensures the audience can see what's happening on stage.
His use of warm lighting reflects the comfort and closeness of the characters and the reason for their journey. Where it could have helped, especially since the stage setting conflicts with the reality, was to be stronger in its indication of time of day – early sunrise, mid-afternoon, dusk.
Reidar Sorensen's sound design produced the natural woodsy occurrences – birds and nature ambience. Sam Sigler was responsible for set dressing and props design, the graffitied tent and other camping utensils. Ellis Tillman's costumes helped define each character: Monica's Lulelemon-esque form-fitting ensemble, Sophie's sensible and meant-for-hiking boots, and Paula's heavy on comfort choices.
Like s'mores at a campfire, 'Step By Step' is a satisfying treat with indulgent, messy characters and something a little sweet for the inevitable end to summer.
If you go:
WHAT: U.S. premiere of 'Step By Step' by Peter Quilter
WHERE: Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables
WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday; Matinees, 2 p.m., Wednesday, 3 p.m. Sunday through Aug. 10. Check website for pre-show specials.
COST: $50, $60, and $70, weekdays; $65, $75 and $85, weekends.
INFORMATION: 305-444-9293 or actorsplayhouse.org
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