Extract from Oxford Times, 25th April 2002:

FIRST NIGHT: ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE Old Fire Station, Oxford by Helen Zaltzmann

JOE Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane is all about what happens when a young lodger becomes part of a 1960s household, made up of an old man and his 41-year-old daughter Kath with occasional visits from his son Ed. Quickly sedced by Kath (who picked him up in a public library) Mr Sloane soon makes himself at home, manipulating those around him, but within a few months is largely outsmarted by the outwardly conventional but dangerously repressed trio.

This entertaining piece of black comedy is currently on offer at the Old Fire Station (unitl saturday). The four-person cast interestingly consists of two first-year undergraduates and two English tutors, all of whom give sparkling performances. The star of the show has to be Susan Hitch as Kath. She is alarmingly convincing as an East Ender with aspirations towards respectability, at times appearing as thick as two planks and at others revealing a clever cunning. She handles Orton's linguistic mix of crudity, euphemism and cliche with consummate skill, and has a disturbing ability to move from banshee wail to calm pronouncement, without apparently drawing breath between them.

Mr Sloane, the object of Kath's affections, is played by James Copp, an appealing young actos whose National Youth Theatre experience clearly stands him in very good stead. He revels in leading the other characters into displaying the nastier sides of their nature, and make the most of the excuses society offers him for his own behaviour.

James Methven, who also co-directs this production, is excellent as Ed and ther can be few college deans who give such a good impression of a Cockney car dealer as he does.

He also ensures that none of Orton's double entendres are allowed to escape us. The final member of the cast, undergraduate Ilan Goodman as the old man Kemp, seems less at ease in his East End persona, and is very obviously in the prime of youth. But he is wonderfully antagonistic, which inevitably gets him into trouble.

For those who remember the 1960s, the carefully arranged set complete with record player, the characters' woolly waistcoats and the old hits that appear at strategic moments will be a welcome bonus. My parents' home even used to have a simliar toasting fork, though I don't remember it ever being used with murderous intent. The moral of it all, of course, is don't speak to strangers in the public library.

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