ALAN Ayckbourn has written 80 plays – the 81st, A Brief History Of Women, will open at the SJT on September 1 – but for all his long association with comedy, he considers only one to be truly a farce.

That play is Taking Steps, play number 24 from 1979; the one set on three floors of an old and reputedly haunted house, but with the stage arranged so that the stairs are flat and all three floors are on a single level.

The "flat stairs" – hence the Taking Steps title – are a comedic invention worthy of such physical comedians as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, maybe with a splash of the surrealism of Salvador Dali, but Kevin Jenkins' period design is but one of the joys of Ayckbourn's delightfully deft drama. “Farce is the most difficult thing to write because it has to be a riot from beginning to end," he has said. "Taking Steps requires the most delicate balance and the steadiest of hands to work."

Marking his 60th year, boy, man and knight, at the SJT, Ayckbourn has picked "one of the sillier plays I've written" for his revival production of 2017. To achieve the delicate balance and steadiest of hands, he has selected such trusted Ayckbourn players as Russell Dixon and Leigh Symonds, Louise Shuttleworth and Laura Matthews from last summer's rep company, plus two SJT debutants with a love of Ayckbourn's work, Laurence Pears and Antony Eden. You won't be surprised to learn that as ever Ayckbourn has cast impeccably.

Eden is wonderful in his verbally dexterous Scarborough bow as Tristram, the nervous, tongue-tied, callow solicitor, who finds ever more ways to give muddled messages and talk himself into awkward situations. Innocent Tristram has been sent, briefcase in hand but ill briefed and ill equipped, to oversee the sale of a large and crumbling house occupied by big-in-buckets, hard-drinking hardware tycoon Roland Crabbe (Dixon). Scheming builder Leslie Bainbridge (an unctuous Symonds) needs to complete a sale to the crabby Crabbe pronto to save his family business, but leaks, erratic pipes and strange, ghostly sounds are not making completion easy.

Nor is the behaviour of Crabbe's erratic wife Elizabeth (Shuttleworth), a dancer who is on the verge of leaving, her Dear John letter written, her harassed brother Mark (Pears) on hand to assist but facing problems of his own in the shape of his shrinking-violet fiancée Kitty (Matthews).

Yes, it is a bedroom farce – there are pyjamas, beds, misunderstandings, more than one letter, people hopping in and out of bed – but with extra dimensions. Rather than farce's traditional multitude of doors, the open-plan design foregoes them, adding to the comedy's brisk flow, and while it may be "one of Ayckbourn's sillier plays", nevertheless a suicide note and bottles of pills play their part. Make sure you take steps to see this superbly directed, exquisitely performed Ayckbourn classic.

Taking Steps, in The Round, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on various dates in rep until October 5. Box office: 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com