As a famous stretcher of theatrical boundaries, Alan Ayckbourn is a tough task-master for the designers who work on his plays. One of his most consistent artistic collaborators over 40 years has been Michael Holt, a freelancer based in Manchester.

It is an illustration of how prolific a designer he is that his name should be on the credits of two major new Ayckbourn productions being staged in Oxfordshire. One is the revival of the 1970s farce Taking Steps, at the Mill at Sonning. The other is the touring production of Ayckbourn’s new play Surprises, which the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, is bringing to Oxford Playhouse next week.

The first represents Michael’s seventh engagement with the play, which is set on three different floors of a dilapidated Victorian mansion. The significant design challenge is that the rooms, which all overlap, are on the same level stage, with the actors seeming to climb the staircases between them.

Sir Alan (as he then wasn’t) indicated as he was writing the play what was going to be required, and supplied illustrations which were then interpreted by Michael.

“He is not difficult to work with,” the designer says, “and I know why he employs me. He is very trusting. He has an idea about what will or will not work. He thinks I am ingenious. He says: ‘Better get Michael to do it’.”

Michael “did it” when Ayckbourn had a fancy to write a play with the stage direction “Exit swimming”. This became Man of the Moment. There was not only swimming, but diving, and a character underwater for five minutes in a secret cavity. At a ton per cubic yard, the weight on stage was enormous.

Way Upstream requires the designer to float a holiday cruiser. “I did the most recent production,” says Michael. “The boat has to manoeuvre about in the water. Alan likes the vessel to take its own personal bow at the end.” Well, who wouldn’t?

For Surprises, which is described as “a new comedy of love stories yet to happen”, Michael has had to supply a number of settings for the three inter-connecting short plays it comprises.

The most unusual, pictured above, represents a centre for cyber dating in about the year 2040 when a telephone system offers 3D representations of callers.

Surprises is the 76th play in Sir Alan’s 50-year career. Described as a “comedy with its head in the future and heart in the past”, it delighted audiences on its premiere last summer. There is certainly no let-up in the quality of Ayckbourn’s writing, according to Michael, an authority on the playwright who wrote the volume about him in the Writers and their Work series from Northcote House Publishers.

He says: “The third section of the play in particular is very fine. It looks at love in the long term and asks whether love can maintain the essential quality it has in the short term, which is that of surprise.”

Will Sir Alan surprise us again?

We shall see.

Surprises is at Oxford Playhouse from Monday Tickets: 01865 305305 oxfordplayhouse.com Taking Steps is at the Mill at Sonning until March 23.

Box office: 0118 969 8000