ORONO – Elizabeth is taking steps to change her life. So is her husband Roland, her brother Mark, his former fiancee Kitty and Leslie, the motorcycle guy.

The trouble is they spend more time running up and down the hundreds of steps in a ramshackle mansion than they do actually changing their lives. That is what makes Alan Ayckbourn’s play so hilarious.

University of Maine graduate student Elaine DiFalco Daugherty chose to direct the prolific English playwright’s 1979 farce as the creative project for her master’s thesis. Her unusual staging and excellent direction almost makes up for the flaws in Ayckbourn’s script.

Daugherty puts the audience on the Hauck Auditorium stage along with her cast. The three-quarter round setting allows only about 100 theatergoers to see each performance of “Taking Steps.” This arrangement turns the audience into a collection of voyeurs peering through the windows and into the lives of the old mansion’s inhabitants.

Instead of building a three- or four-story set, the playwright flattened the production. The stairs to the various levels in the house are painted on the floor of the stage and the cast mimes climbing up and down them.

Daugherty’s skill as a director shows in the performances delivered by her six-character cast. The most important element in any farce is timing and these student actors execute the strenuous physical comedy of the production with near perfection.

Brad Fillion hysterically blusters and harrumphs his way across the stage as Roland, the middle-aged, middle-class husband of the much younger Elizabeth. He brings to the role maturity beyond his years and the comic timing of a much more experienced actor.

Tristram’s nervous mannerisms are a funny foil to Roland’s bravado. Trevor Bean’s stumbling, bumbling and stuttering solicitor avoids falling into stereotypes. He gives the character a depth unusual in comedy and shows the audience how this rather demure man is the only one who actually takes the steps everyone else just talks about.

Andy Hicks plays Mark, the brother caught in his sister’s marital crisis and his own romantic dilemma. Hicks mines small comic gems from his character’s attempts to organize his life and those lives of the other characters. The more things go awry, the funnier his efforts to contain the chaos around him become.

One of the play’s most hysterical moments is when these three actors, clad in identical pajamas, arrange, then rearrange their sleeping arrangements. This series of scenes would not work so well if the three did not work together with such machine-like precision.

Mary McIntosh brings the clumsy ditzy and indecisive Elizabeth to life with charm and surprising grace. Joe Kilch is charming as Leslie, the gay man who lusts after Mark and Tristram. Amanda Eaton gives the underwritten part of Kitty welcomed depth.

In “Taking Steps,” Daugherty shows that she has the talent to be a fine director. Her flair for unusual staging and her ability to turn actors into an ensemble bode well for her future in theater.

“Taking Steps” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. No latecomers will be seated. For tickets, call 581-3571.