July 6, 2010
\nAdelaide
\nTheatre<\/p>\n
Entertaining Mr Sloane
\nby Joe Orton
\nState Theatre Company of South Australia
\nDunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
\nJuly 6. Tickets $ 29 – 59. Bookings : BASS 131 246
\nUntil July 25.<\/p>\n
When the famous playwright Terence Rattigan saw Entertaining Mr Sloane<\/em> in its first season in London in May, 1964, he described it as the best first play he had seen in \u201cthirty odd years\u201d.\u00a0 The prodigious fluency of Joe Orton\u2019s grim three act farce still impresses, as does his use of the device sometimes referred to as the \u00a0Stranger in the House of Order.<\/p>\n Like Moliere\u2019s Tartuffe and Jim Carrey\u2019s Cable Guy, the devious Mr Sloane insinuates himself into the household of brother and sister, Eddy and Kath, and, in exchange for occasional gigolo duties with both, looks forward to a cushy life of idle frolic. The twist \u2013 and it is the point of Orton\u2019s satire \u2013 is that Sloane, the amoral young psychopath, is no match for the concealed depravity of his apparently respectable captors.<\/p>\n With an excellent cast, and Victoria Lamb\u2019s painstakingly tasteless and down- at- heel drawing room d\u00e9cor (surrounded on every side by an atoll of junk and detritus) State Theatre Company director, Adam Cook\u2019s production reminds us of the influence on Orton of Harold Pinter\u2019s 1958 play, The Birthday Party<\/em>. If Pinter\u2019s was the comedy of menace, so Orton reveled in the menace of comedy.<\/p>\n The actors understand this and do not flinch. Sean Taylor is excellent as the repressed predator Eddy, and Dennis Olsen astutely moves between old man Steptoe comedy and defiant dread as Kemp, the doomed \u201cDadda\u201d who, although legally blind, has fatefully seen too much. After a tentative beginning, Renato Fabretti , especially in Act Two when he is kitted out in \u00a0black leather and butcher boy cap, transmits a convincingly narcissistic blonde charm as Sloane.<\/p>\n Jacki Weaver, as Kath, is simply outstanding. In a strawberry blonde wig and dressed like an ageing kewpie doll, her performance is expertly pitched and key to the production. Physically and vocally she drives the comedy, but she also has a strangely resolute dignity which, at least in part, repels the play\u2019s misogynist excesses.<\/p>\n And they are many, because, nearly fifty years later, the broad spectrum iconoclasm in the play is not as funny as it used to be. Especially in Act Three, Eddy\u2019s aversion to women is relentless and it is hard to distinguish from the writer\u2019s own suppressed rage. This is a most accomplished production but we are left wondering whether this play is satire mired in its own derision. For all his jokes and comic situations, Joe Orton\u2019s Mr<\/em> Sloane<\/em> is much more uncomfortably sinister than he is entertaining.<\/p>\n Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n BRIEF The prodigious fluency of Joe Orton\u2019s grim three act farce still impresses<\/p>\n as the devious Mr Sloane insinuates himself into the household of brother and sister, Eddy and Kath, and, in exchange for occasional gigolo duties with both, looks forward to a cushy life of idle frolic. The twist \u2013 and it is the point of Orton\u2019s satire \u2013 is that Sloane, the amoral young psychopath, is no match for the concealed depravity of his apparently respectable captors.<\/p>\n With an excellent cast, and Victoria Lamb\u2019s painstakingly tasteless d\u00e9cor, State Theatre Company director, Adam Cook\u2019s production reminds us of the influence on Orton of Harold Pinter. If Pinter\u2019s was the comedy of menace, so Orton reveled in the menace of comedy.<\/p>\n The actors understand this and do not flinch. Sean Taylor is excellent as the repressed predator Eddy, as is Dennis Olsen as the old man Kemp, and Renato Fabretti, in\u00a0 black leathers and butcher boy cap, transmits a convincingly narcissistic blonde charm as Sloane.<\/p>\n Jacki Weaver, as Kath, is simply outstanding. In a strawberry blonde wig and dressed like an ageing kewpie doll, her performance is expertly pitched and , at least in part, repels the play\u2019s misogynist excesses. And they are many, because, nearly fifty years later, for all his jokes and comic situations, Joe Orton\u2019s Mr<\/em> Sloane<\/em> is much more uncomfortably sinister than he is entertaining.<\/p>\n Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n The Australian, July 8, 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" July 6, 2010 Adelaide Theatre Entertaining Mr Sloane by Joe Orton State Theatre Company of South Australia Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre July 6. Tickets $ 29 – 59. Bookings : BASS 131 246 Until July 25. When the famous playwright Terence Rattigan saw Entertaining Mr Sloane in its first season in London in May, 1964, he described it as the best first play he had seen in \u201cthirty odd years\u201d.\u00a0 The prodigious fluency of Joe Orton\u2019s grim three act […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7","category-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1532"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1534,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions\/1534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nEntertaining Mr Sloane
\nby Joe Orton
\nState Theatre Company of South Australia
\nDunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
\nJuly 6. Tickets $ 29 – 59. Bookings : BASS 131 246
\nUntil July 25.<\/p>\n