March 8, 2007
Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane, a defining monument of 60s radical theatre, is a play whose notoriety has perhaps outlasted its potency. Themes of bisexuality, domestic violence and simulated incest look pretty tame in an age that has enjoyed Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and even The Romans in Britain. It stands instead primarily as a period piece and continues to be worth staging not because it might yet have audiences screaming in the aisles, as Orton wished, but because it is a tightly written and beautifully observed exposition of social hypocrisy and the developing cultural menace of the consumer generation.
When a household takes a lodger, the presence of the stranger brings with it fascinations and implications for each member of the family. Landlady Kath seduces, and falls pregnant by, the newly arrived Mr. Sloane, her brother Ed, finds him similarly sexually attractive, while their father Kemp recognises him as a murderer. When Sloane murders Kemp, he is left at the mercy of Kath and Ed, but succeeds in making his freedom valuable to both of them.
Orton’s script is a celebration of hidden meaning and the potential for multi-layered interpretation. At its most superficial, the play is a farce that turns sour, beneath which lies a grotesque vision of the sordid underbelly of mundane domesticity. Jessica Hammett carries the role of Kath with tremendous energy and demonstrates an impressive aptitude for comic timing and pathos, while being utterly convincing as the invisible and forgotten middle-aged working-class woman whose fantasies become a desperate and devastating reality. There is, however, a sense, contrary to co-director Sophie Duncan’s hope that the actors would go for the jugular rather than the laugh, that Ms Hammett’s light and natural audience appeal would struggle not to get a laugh.
Alexander Ball’s high-camp portrayal of the pivotal Sloane is certainly entertaining, finding an interesting balance somewhere between Malcolm McDowell and Mervyn Hayes, but again leans a little too heavily on the comic potential of the script, always a danger with Orton’s dialogue. His charmingly naive persona doesn’t, on this occasion, seem quite as cynically calculated as Orton might have intended; Sloane’s brutality, when it comes, feels more like an actual loss of control than the extreme exercise in manipulation-gone-too-far that it represents. He does, after all, get away with murder, through the exploitation of his sexual charms. That said, Ball’s presence on the stage is consistently strong, working as an effectively flamboyant contrast to Kath’s earthy lust and Ed’s repressed homosexuality.
Tom Wilkinson, in the role of Ed, pulls together a fine, well controlled performance, confidently portraying the personal tensions of desire and denial and the flexible boundaries of moral transgression as experienced through the eyes of a very convincing spiv. Will Blair does a good job of Kemp, although the usual difficulty of turning someone young into someone old is once again in evidence, the make-up creating an effect more seedy than decrepit.
The False Teeth production, though perhaps not a definitive interpretation does, nonetheless, provide a solid and well acted version of the play, and is well worth seeing on many levels. It is a pity that some of the potential darkness implicit Orton’s script is not full realised, but the company demonstrate enough understanding of the subtexts to make the experience pretty satisfying.
When a household takes a lodger, the presence of the stranger brings with it fascinations and implications for each member of the family. Landlady Kath seduces, and falls pregnant by, the newly arrived Mr. Sloane, her brother Ed, finds him similarly sexually attractive, while their father Kemp recognises him as a murderer. When Sloane murders Kemp, he is left at the mercy of Kath and Ed, but succeeds in making his freedom valuable to both of them.
Orton’s script is a celebration of hidden meaning and the potential for multi-layered interpretation. At its most superficial, the play is a farce that turns sour, beneath which lies a grotesque vision of the sordid underbelly of mundane domesticity. Jessica Hammett carries the role of Kath with tremendous energy and demonstrates an impressive aptitude for comic timing and pathos, while being utterly convincing as the invisible and forgotten middle-aged working-class woman whose fantasies become a desperate and devastating reality. There is, however, a sense, contrary to co-director Sophie Duncan’s hope that the actors would go for the jugular rather than the laugh, that Ms Hammett’s light and natural audience appeal would struggle not to get a laugh.
Alexander Ball’s high-camp portrayal of the pivotal Sloane is certainly entertaining, finding an interesting balance somewhere between Malcolm McDowell and Mervyn Hayes, but again leans a little too heavily on the comic potential of the script, always a danger with Orton’s dialogue. His charmingly naive persona doesn’t, on this occasion, seem quite as cynically calculated as Orton might have intended; Sloane’s brutality, when it comes, feels more like an actual loss of control than the extreme exercise in manipulation-gone-too-far that it represents. He does, after all, get away with murder, through the exploitation of his sexual charms. That said, Ball’s presence on the stage is consistently strong, working as an effectively flamboyant contrast to Kath’s earthy lust and Ed’s repressed homosexuality.
Tom Wilkinson, in the role of Ed, pulls together a fine, well controlled performance, confidently portraying the personal tensions of desire and denial and the flexible boundaries of moral transgression as experienced through the eyes of a very convincing spiv. Will Blair does a good job of Kemp, although the usual difficulty of turning someone young into someone old is once again in evidence, the make-up creating an effect more seedy than decrepit.
The False Teeth production, though perhaps not a definitive interpretation does, nonetheless, provide a solid and well acted version of the play, and is well worth seeing on many levels. It is a pity that some of the potential darkness implicit Orton’s script is not full realised, but the company demonstrate enough understanding of the subtexts to make the experience pretty satisfying.