THERE was a time when dry-slope skiing at Crimple Valley, Harrogate, was the cutting edge of sporting recreation. Now, Xscape at Milton Keynes has 'real' snow on its indoor slope for the latest in designer exercise.

Likewise, John Godber's skiing comedy On The Piste has moved with the times, being improved on and off the slopes.

Godber had not directed his Alpine excursion since the first version premiered at the Chesterfield Pomegranate Theatre in December 1991, and ten years on he decided it was time to take to the slopes once more, first at Hull Truck in December and now on a tour that slaloms its way into the Grand Opera House in York next week.

"I first wrote it in 1990 and although I didn't realise it at the time, it was very much a 'work in progress', so it's interesting to see where we've moved on to," says John, who had drawn upon his own novice skiing experiences for the play. "I think I've now made it a better drama, and that was one of the reasons for going back on the slopes."

On The Piste takes local radio disc jockey Chris Baxter out of the afternoon-show comfort zone and into the chill and thrills of the Austrian Alps, at a time when his marriage to Alison has frozen up in his mid-30s, and there are distractions aplenty on the slopes.

When first performed, the sight of skiing on stage was the play's driving force, just as Godber had used weight-lifting in his first play, Cramp, and Rugby League in Up'n'Under.

"But the meat of the play was always the relationship of Chris and his wife falling apart, and where previously I felt On The Piste was too slapstick, now it's an improved piece of theatre. We've cooled off the daft stuff on skis to concentrate on a relationship on the skids.

"Essentially it's a play about the unstitching of a relationship, in a place where Chris is out of kilter with his surroundings and finds himself pitched against the athleticism of the skiing coach. He knows he can't compete but he still tries."

John suggests the alien environment for Chris and Alison informs the way they behave, bringing their sexually bankrupt partnership to crisis point: "Their relationship would not fall apart if they hadn't gone skiing," he says.

Just as their holiday is a last-ditch case of nothing ventured, nothing gained or lost, so that principle applies to Godber and his comedies. Skiing on stage was not without its problems in 1991 - the skis had to be laminated with bubble bath and would emit bubbles on contact with water on the slope - but now On The Piste runs on smooth casters.

What next for the Hull master of physical comedy? How about using water, an element so effective in A Midsummer Night's Dream at York Theatre Royal last autumn and Singin' In The Rain, now raining at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds?

"We're a long way off water at the moment at Hull Truck. Maybe in the new space but not in our Spring Street building," says John. "Water will have to wait."

On The Piste, Grand Opera House, York, February 4 to 9; Harrogate Theatre, April 2 to 6. For York tickets, ring 01903 671818; Harrogate, 01423 502116.

Updated: 10:15 Friday, February 01, 2002