Throughout this show, I was repeatedly struck by quite how awful English cuisine was in the 1960s. Horrifyingly, Kath informs Mr Sloane, in a line written and delivered apparently without spite, that he should be able to find “a quarter of boiled ham” in the kitchen. Is that an appropriate metric for measuring ham? Why is it boiled? At another point, the audience learns that Kemp’s stomach ache is attributable to the “half a jar of pickles you’ve put away”. I’m not surprised!
Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane is currently running at the Burton Taylor Studio, courtesy of An Exciting New productions (of Posh fame). In it, a young man, the eponymous Mr Sloane, arrives at the home of the long-suffering widow Kath and her elderly, visually impaired father, Kemp. Through his alleged charm and her obvious desperation, Sloane becomes a fixture of the place. But, once Kath’s brother Ed – whose homosexuality (to use the parlance of the day) is about as subtle as a New Year’s Eve fireworks display – joins the trio, Mr Sloane finds himself torn between the interests of the siblings, and the suspicions of their father.
The programme provided by the production adds to this that “domestic and erotic chaos ensues”. I think that sums things up fairly well.
The BT is a small space, and the decision to seat the audience in the round was an understandable one – physically hemming in the performers, just as the characters are themselves circumscribed. The set was deliberately spare; tattered period furniture arranged around a coffee table. The scattered handful of chintzy teacups was a nice touch – a symbol of a socially climbing family possessing only the flimsiest of respectable veneers.
However, the presumed need to play for four conflicting sight lines led to a kind of perpetual-motion-blocking. Or, to put it another way, there was just too much wandering around. At its most successful moments, the constant circling and shifting of angles lent the production a predatory, prowling tension. Yet, more often, the movement was not linked in any visible way to necessity (of character or plot), and the effect was listless. Vinyl floors are unforgiving, and little does more to dissipate tension than the sound of scuffing. Stillness would frequently have been the more rewarding, and indeed braver, choice from director Harry Brook.
Mr Sloane himself was played – with a glower and a pout – by Am Wyckoff, who has that rare skill in a scene partner of listening attentively. So often, the Actor’s forgivable preoccupation at any given moment is “what am I saying next?”, but Wyckoff always appeared entirely immanent. On occasion, the most satisfaction was to be found in watching Sloane watch somebody else, even if that somebody else was talking.
Eric Balonwu featured as Kemp, occasionally an afterthought alongside the larger, “flashier” parts. Balonwu did good work, finding sparks whilst alone onstage with Wyckoff’s Sloane. The gravelly, “old man” voice affected by Balonwu was mostly effective, though I must confess that to my ears there was the infrequent slippage into something closer to Moss from The IT Crowd.
Tomás Sergeant’s incarnation of Ed was particularly praiseworthy. His comically oversized suit and heavy fringe (used almost as a prop by Sergeant) contributed to the character’s overall flamboyant smarm. The turn was darkly reminiscent of The Duchess of Malfi’s Ferdinand, albeit without the trappings of a renaissance Italian court. Particularly during the third act, Sergeant mined the play’s dark comedy with distinct success; I suspect his delivery of lines like “Whatever it is, boy, it’s murder. You’ve got some explaining to do” will stay with me throughout Hilary.
The cast was rounded out by Maisie Lambert as Kath who gave, in my view, the strongest performance of the four. Her sexually frustrated 41 (?) year-old widow was breathy and jittery, a prim sinner more tyrannised than tyrant. There were lovely grace notes throughout Lambert’s work, Kath’s constant smoothing of her already tight dress being a good example.
It is also tempting to give Lambert further credit considering that all these feats were achieved in the face of the Oedipal nightmare which her dialogue increasingly became. In the script, the line “I love him like a mam” is delivered, contrary perhaps to expectations, by a pregnant Kath in reference to Mr Sloane, the father.
The biggest difficulty I had with Entertaining Mr Sloane, as my last comment might have anticipated, was the text itself. If nothing else, this play, written in 1963, is starting to show its age – both in small ways and in larger ones. The language of youth criminality, for example, could have been lifted from an unfunny version of Gee, Officer Krupkee.
More concerningly, the relationship of Entertaining Mr Sloane to women is an uneasy one even under the most favourable scrutiny. No doubt in an era when homosexuality was still a few years away even from the baby-steps towards decriminalisation, the undiscriminating suggestiveness of Orton’s work would have been provocative, radical even. But the world is different now, and as the depiction of Ed (and his relationship to Mr Sloane) creeps closer to parody, Orton’s treatment of Kath also moves into the foreground.
The play has a contempt for the female body; as the plot unfolds, comments like Ed’s “She’s like a sow, though she is my sister” become more common. At one point, he forces Kath to look at herself in the mirror while he points out the more undesirable elements (weight gain in particular) of her appearance. Mr Sloane then denies any attraction – any possibility of attraction – towards Kath; an alliance of queer men, or queer-implied men, against the play’s sole woman; a woman who then comes literally crawling back across the stage to Sloane without a moment’s hesitation.
This is not to say that there weren’t numerous wonderful moments throughout the production – one flash of violence became a constellation of capable performances, well-deployed lighting (by Orli Wilkins), and sharp direction. There were also reminders of the wonder that is live theatre: I am thinking, of course, of the circle of ham which was inadvertently sent spinning across the stage like a discus.
When this is balanced, it seems a shame that all those involved were sometimes poorly served by Entertaining Mr Sloane itself. Maybe the line between misogyny and satire is a thin one, drawn with delicacy and precision by Joe Orton, and maybe I am simply missing it. Still, I am unconvinced. By no means is this a blanket denunciation of Orton, but it seems fair to assess a 2023 performance using the criteria of 2023 rather than those of 1963 – and in this performance, the past felt overbearing.