Extract from Cherwell newspaper, 19th April 2002:

The bent rent boy by Helen Zaltzmann ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE by JOE ORTON OFS TUESDAY - SATURDAY

In a tidy summation of his prevailing literary themes of homosexuality and violence, at the age of 34 Joe Orton was battered to death by his boyfriend. Had he not been on the receiving end of fatal hammer-blows, no doubt Orton would have been impressed bt the drama and grisliness of this act, which wouldn't look out of place in one of his own plays. A question not so much of life imitating art, but of life and art both being total cunts.

Set in a house on a rubbish dump, which apparently symbolizes Orton's disdain for famiy, Orton's first play Entertaining Mr Sloane centres around its inhabitants, 41-year old Kath (Susan Hitch) and her elderly father Kemp (Ilan Goodman). Kemp is estranged from his son, Ed (the show's director James Methven, last seen in Cabaret at the Playhouse wooing Hitch with tropical fruit), having removed the lock from Ed's bedroom door when he was a teenage "as a precautionary measure" and thus catching him committing "felony in the bedroom". Ed and Kath aren't getting on terribly well either, ever since Ed's sometime lover Tommy fathered a son with a teenage Kath and Ed in revenge forced Kath to give up the child for adoption. Sibling concord is further upset by the unacknowledged sexual frisson between them, which manifests itself in Ed's inability to shag people who aren't also shagging his sister. Christmas round their house is no doubt a barrel of laughs.

Kath, desperate for the company of young men, takes in 20-year-old Mr Sloane (James Copp) as a lodger. The family set about entertaining him, though not with a nice rubber of bridge or some amusing shadow puppetry - Kath by inventing herslef as his surrogate mother and lover; Ed by hiring him as his driver and homo-erotic plaything, dressing him in head-to-toe leather; Kemp by stabbing him in the leg with a fork. Sloane finds the household a surrogate family, but it soon transpires he is no innocent, as Kemp cottons on to the fact that Sloane is an unpunished murderer. Tension escalates as Kemp, with the voice of an adenoidal lizard, makes sly digs at Sloane and Sloane attempts to squirm away from responsibility. This culminates in tragic violence, the impressively unflinching depiction of which is thoroughly unsettling.

Approximately as disturbing as this is Kath's seduction of Sloane, seeking not only to adopt him in place of her lost son but also to be impregnated by him in order to obtain a replacement. Attempting poise and suavesse, she swoops in with such killer lines as "Let me plump your cushion!" (fnarr fnarr) and, in an effort to be enticing in racy clothing, "They make garments so revealing these days, you'd almost think they wanted to provoke a rape!". Rendered immobile by a combination of Kath's breasts and nihilism, Sloane manages not to run a mile when she exclaims, "You're such a big heavy baby - I'm going to be so ashamed in the morning!", though this type of behaviour makes an Oedipus complex seem mainstream.

The atmosphere grows ever menacing as Sloane bullies Kemp, looming over the old man hunched up in his chair, and as Kath and Ed compete to make Sloane obligated to them. Though some of the long speeches are somewhat stagy, the strong cast treats the dialogue with great dynamism and deal capably with this deliberately uncomfortably piece. Ilan Goodman's Kemp is cagy, brittle and joyless, and has a fine line in blood-curdling groans when being whacked in the stomach with a big stick. James Copp's Sloane is alternately commanding and worming his way out of responsibility for his actions, blaming a brutal murder he committed first on the elderly victim's pills, next pleading that the old man had little quality of life anyway at his age. Susan Hitch's Kath is crass and desperate for affection - "I need to be loved" - and she effectively portrays the character's unsavoury attempt to be mother and lover in love. James Methven's simultaneously authoritative and defective Ed intimidates Sloane, disgusted at his lack of principles - "You must accept responsibility for your actions" - but is also made vulnerable by his attraction to Sloane, who manipulates with his knowledge of this fact. This, Methven's side-project from being Dean of Oriel, is a fine production of a very interesting and disturbing play; Englishists will be very excited by Orton's thematic complexity, everyone else will find it a total headfuck.

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