An audacious revival of a black comedy classic
Nadia Fall’s opening show as new artistic director of the Young Vic is a stunning revival of the 1964 British classic Entertaining Mr Sloane. Written by bright spark Joe Orton, this ‘deliciously wicked story’ follows a 20-year old Mr Sloane as he infiltrates the family home inhabited by an ageing widow Kath and her partially blind father. Immediately enticed by Mr Sloane, Kath makes her intentions clear, while her father is sure he’s seen him somewhere before…
Visited frequently by her brother Eddie, it becomes clear that Kath isn’t the only one interested in this pretty young thing, and Mr Sloane is caught in the middle of a sexually-charged kinky love triangle. Performed in the round, the audience is invited to lean into voyeurism as they observe the characters fight it out in the arena of their sitting room. Although this is a fun and symbolic staging choice, many physical gags and intimate moments occur facing one direction, constantly leaving one side of the audience laughing and the other perplexed.
Introducing Jordan Stephens (from hip hop duo Rizzle Kicks fame), in his stage debut, this production also features several theatre veterans. Stephens performance is admirable, but Tamzin Outhwaite steals the show with a hilarious but depraved Kath who yearns to be a ‘mama’ in every sense of the word. Daniel Cerqueira is a deeply repressed Ed, a successful businessman with a forgiving nature and a leather fetish.
Peter Mckintosh stays true to time period with his costumes, leaving the audience to find the relatability in the play without recontextualising. His set is spectacular, taking the in-text references to the house sitting on a rubbish dump literally. Pieces of furniture and various bits of debris are suspended above the stage and stacked around the periphery creating a striking tableaux.
Fight and intimacy director Haruka Kuroda manages to make a brutal fight scene both realistic and believable, a constant challenge for live theatre. The intimacy direction, while funny and sometimes shocking, also highlights the difference between Kath and her brother Ed, while both are arguably sexual predators one is in hiding while the other unashamed.
Entertaining Mr Sloane is certainly an ‘audacious play’ and is presented beautifully by the Young Vic. As Fall perfectly encapsulates in her foreword, ‘underneath the charade of manners and society, we all have the same desires, vulnerabilities and venom running through our veins’, and this play follows this sentiment completely.