While the original Stephen Joseph Theatre production was staged this way, the subsequent West End transfer was an end-stage performance, which was considered by Ayckbourn to compromise the effectiveness of the three-floor setting.

Taking Steps was premièred at the Stephen Joseph Theatre (then at its old Westwood site) in Scarborough on 28 September 1979 with the following cast:[3] The production team were: Ayckbourn reportedly had reservations about transferring the production to the West End, due to concerns of overexposure, doubts that a cast with high-profile names would be as effective as the ensemble casts normally used at Scarborough, and partly a feeling that West End audiences were used to his earlier comic plays and not his newer darker plays.

[1] Following the lack of success of the West End productions of Ten Times Table and Joking Apart, Michael Codron did not allow Ayckbourn to direct Taking Steps, and instead brought in Michael Rudman, then Peter Hall's deputy at the National Theatre.

[4] The play opened at the Lyric Theatre on 2 September 1980 with the following cast:[3] Ayckbourn was reportedly very unhappy with the London production, feeling both that the set, end-stage rather than in-the-round, did not work ("it looked a bit like a furniture store"), and that the director, Michael Rudman, had turned an ensemble farce into a star vehicle for Dinsdale Landon as Roland (in the process overshadowing what Ayckbourn viewed as the central role of Tristram).

In 1990, with a relatively short period after the ill-fated London production, it was revived at the Stephen Joseph Theatre with Ayckbourn directing again and Michael Gambon as Roland.