Tag Archives: Joe Orton

Review – Entertaining Mr Sloane, Young Vic, London, 15th October 2025

Posted on by

1964. The year of A Hard Day’s Night and Little Red Rooster, Mary Quant and Bobby Charlton. Harold Wilson became the first Labour Prime Minister since Clement Attlee. And 31-year-old Joe Orton (although he claimed he was 25 in the original programme) had his first stage play, Entertaining Mr Sloane, performed at the Arts Theatre in London. The Guardian called it “a milk-curdling essay in lower-middle-class nihilism” but owing to the support, both financial and moral, of none other than Sir Terence Rattigan, it transferred to Wyndhams’ and had a brief but artistically successful run, winning the London Critics’ Variety award for the best play of 1964.

This is a welcome and inspired choice for Nadia Fall’s first production in charge of the Young Vic. In case you don’t know: Kath lives with her father, Kemp, (the Dadda) and has a spare room which she is going to let out to Mr Sloane. He is 20, a loner; physically appealing in a dangerous way, and it only takes her twenty or so minutes to find a reason for her to remove his trousers. Her brother, Ed, appears influential and wealthy; he doesn’t trust any potential lodgers and intends to send him packing, until he too finds Sloane physically appealing and tries to find a way to get closer to him. Sloane seems inexperienced but knows precisely what both brother and sister are after and works to play the situation to his advantage. The Dadda, however, recognises Sloane as the murderer of his ex-employer. If things weren’t already dark enough, they quickly get darker.

Few creative artists make such a huge mark that they deserve their own adjective, but Ortonesque survives as the only concise way of capturing his particular brand of innovative, dangerous, surreal, sexually charged, axis-changing and rivetingly funny drama. Entertaining Mr Sloane is a classic subversion of a traditional drawing-room comedy; three acts, one location, pretentions to moderate wealth and social influence, it’s no wonder that his work is a natural crossover product of the likes of Coward and Rattigan with Pinter and Osborne.

When the text was sent to the Lord Chamberlain’s office for a licence, the only thing the censor picked up on was the overt sexual activity between Kath and Sloane; all the other undercurrents in the play simply went unnoticed. Seeing Entertaining Mr Sloane today, over sixty years since it first appeared, gives you a strangely nostalgic feel for the Swinging Sixties. You can almost taste how shocking some reactionaries would have found it, and how deliciously it would have appealed to the progressives.

What makes this play stand out though is Orton’s superlative writing skills. The words his characters speak are subtle and nuanced, and their meanings are indirect; his ear for conversational patterns is outstanding. He has that enviable ability to present an awkward, uncomfortable, potentially tragic situation and then instantly send it up so that you burst out laughing and then hate yourself for your insensitivity. No subject is ever out of bounds for Orton. Domestic violence, mistreatment of the elderly, rape and assaults; Kemp grumbles about the number of foreigners coming into the country, committing sexual assaults – some prejudices don’t change.

Peter McKintosh’s set is a work of art in itself. When you enter the auditorium a jumble of domestic items and furniture dangle suspended from the ceiling – chairs, a pram, an ironing board, an airer, and so on; and around the base, a clutter of junk and debris surround the circular stage. Orton points out that Kath and Kemp’s house is next door to rubbish tip, which gave the inspiration for the set. It’s a nice idea, but it’s really only a mention in passing, so it’s neither vital to the plot, nor does it get in the way. The decision to stage the play in the round – because, as confirmed in a programme note, it is a voyeuristic play – works well. There is no hiding place in Entertaining Mr Sloane and there is no hiding place on the set either.

Richard Howell’s lighting design allows for some ingenious effects; off-stage characters are highlighted as if frozen in time, slow-motion sequences are lit artificially to create an other worldliness, and there is a stunningly impactful, strobe-filled start to Act Two which sees Sloane transformed from subdued semi-formal clothing to leather joy boy (the uniform Ed has chosen for him), an effect that fully deserves its own round of applause from the audience. Nadia Fall has made a few other fascinating directorial choices, including an impressive tug-of-love/semi-BDSM final tableau as Kath and Ed rope up the powerless Sloane with telephone wires graphically to convey how successfully the arch manipulator Sloane has been out-manipulated by the brother and sister. I am always a sucker for effective stage combat and the scene where Sloane batters Kemp is fantastically convincing.

Tamzin Outhwaite gives a wonderfully entertaining performance as Kath, a repressed sex kitten in a pinny who moves into Sloane’s space as a surrogate Mummy, unhesitatingly taking the lead whilst protesting her respectability. Her performance is perhaps more geared towards the comedy of the situation than the darkness, with lovely moments with her false teeth, and terrific comic timing of Orton’s killer lines. Daniel Cerqueira’s Ed is a chain-smoking, snide wannabe-bully who allows himself to be distracted and influenced by Sloane, almost but never quite taking control of situations. His vocal delivery reminded me strongly of the comedian Micky Flanagan, which was slightly unsettling; but it’s a convincing portrayal of someone fighting to stay one step ahead.

Christopher Fairbank is excellent as Kemp, a delightfully grubby old man, who’s seen it all and isn’t fooled by anyone, but knows he has to behave if he wants to keep a roof over his head. And, in an outstanding stage debut, Jordan Stephens is superb as Sloane, stringing the siblings along with just the right level of innocence until he flashes into intense anger and violence.

The production does come across as a little ponderous at first, with Act One feeling a little static, with the characters slow to develop. Once the second Act kicks in, the pace builds, and the nastiness intensifies to reach its exciting and unusual conclusion. An excellent opportunity to see Orton’s first stage work – and to reflect on how he could potentially have carved out an immensely successful career had he lived.

4-starsFour They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – What The Butler Saw, Masque Theatre, Playhouse, Northampton, 31st May 2016

Posted on by

We hadn’t seen any productions by the Masque Theatre before, but, after a suggestion by our friend and blogging colleague Mr Smallmind, we thought we’d bite the bullet for their production of Joe Orton’s What The Butler Saw. I must be honest; Mrs Chrisparkle did take a little persuasion to agree to come, as the memory of some previous amateur productions she has seen is enough to bring her out in hives. Nevertheless, on the recommendation of our friend and on the strength of the play, we did it.

I’d always wanted to see a production of What The Butler Saw, but never have – in fact, I realise that this is the first time I have seen any Orton play on stage. I read all his works voraciously when I was about 16, finding them all completely irresistible, and for me they haven’t lost their edge one iota. This classic, blind leading the blind or rather mad leading the sane but but they seem mad, comedy is crammed with fantastically funny lines, strong characters and a beautiful sense of surrealism. It contains some of my favourite quotes from 20th century drama. Mrs Prentice tells her husband she is going to take up with an Indian boyfriend. In the real world this would lead to a response regarding marriage break-up, or jealousy, or fury, or some other emotion. In Orton’s world, however, the man replies: “you can’t take lovers in Asia, the airfare would be crippling”. Apart, of course, from the rather salacious nature of many of his plays, it’s that oddish use of language that really sets him apart from his contemporaries. Mrs Prentice, again, this time when cornered to admit that she’s been faking her orgasms: “my uterine contractions have been bogus for some time!” There’s a delightful bourgeois tone lurking in there. You could almost hear the 1970s Penelope Keith saying it. Even the reunion of twins at the end of the show is reminiscent of The Importance of Being Earnest.

What The Butler Saw wasn’t performed until 1969, two years after Orton’s death and one year after the withdrawal of censorship. I think the censor would have bridled at some of the content but would have been most uncomfortable when dealing with the missing parts of Sir Winston Churchill. Under censorship, you weren’t allowed to “represent on the stage in an invidious manner a living person or a person recently dead”; and interestingly it was only in the 1975 production that Sergeant Match finally got to hold aloft Winnie’s missing penis (for that, gentle reader, was the erroneous part of his statue lost in the gas explosion, which became embedded in Geraldine’s grandmother). Ralph Richardson, who played Dr Rance in 1969, couldn’t go along with that, so they made do with using Winnie’s cigar instead. Orton would have hated the lack of gumption. Anyway, it’s great to see the play still doing the rounds in both professional and amateur productions.

There’s no point pretending that this was a perfect production because it wasn’t; nevertheless, I’m not going to criticise anyone who takes part in amateur dramatics because a) I haven’t the guts to do it myself and b) well, it would be churlish. To be fair, the little Playhouse stage lends itself very nicely to the production, and the six actors manage to perform a lot of physical comedy, often just in their underwear, without getting in each other’s way or tripping each other up, which is more than can be said for the recent production of Chicago at the Derngate. The only effect too far for this production was to recreate the security bars that surround the stage once Dr Rance has set off the alarm, making the Sergeant’s final appearance through the skylight more understandable; we just had a change of lighting and to work on our imagination instead.

Peter Darnell directs the play at a crisp pace and with a nice feel for the nonsensical way in which we, the general public, will do anything that a doctor tells us to in the consulting room. From the cast, Mrs C and I both agreed that the ladies did a particularly good job. Lisa Shepherd gave a very confident performance as Geraldine, desperately clinging on to the idea that there must be some good reason why she’s dressed as a bell-hop, or maybe not dressed much at all. I also thought Nicky Osborne added a lot of oomph to the character of Mrs Prentice, delightfully conveying her open sexual nature and her frustrations at being lumbered with Dr Prentice. I enjoyed Jof Davies’ portrayal of hotel-boy Nick, matter-of-factly demanding money for the steamy photos he took of Mrs Prentice the previous night; and whereas Miss Shepherd could almost pass for a bell-hop on a dark night, there’s no way you could ever think Mr Davies could be mistaken for a female secretary; well, not in that dress anyway. But, then, that’s all part of the fun.

It’s an ambitious play, with a lot of onstage shenanigans, and everyone gave it a good stab, and you can’t ask for more than that. Great fun, if not for all the family, then for everyone who’s ever fancied a little hows-your-father when they shouldn’t. On until Saturday 4th June!