Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Entertaining Mr Sloane’ which is at the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme until Saturday 19th April and Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn from 22nd to 24th May 2014.
I’m afraid this play has had its day.
Fifty years ago it was one of a cavalry of new works that liberated British Theatre forever, opening it up to unconventional thinking and exotic horizons. But the passage of time has not been kind to Joe Orton’s absurdist 1964 debut. His once well-aimed sledgehammer seems now a blunt instrument. In today’s sophistication, it’s no longer enough to be a rebel without a clue. And whilst the New Vic faithful gathered in large numbers last night to honour this pioneering piece, the laughter the play once earned was sadly sporadic.
I fear this is partly due to the lack of chemistry in London Classic Theatre’s new production. Paul Sandys’ Mr Sloane is a cold-fish drifter who would frighten nobody. Much of the first half dialogue is so relentlessly inquisitorial it’s tiring to listen to and his choice of a strangely mono-tonal Jools Holland voice only emphasised this.
Pauline Whitaker’s mumsie landlady, Kath, is convincingly hyper-possessive but hopelessly sexless when attempting her seductions. No wonder she prefers foam rubber pillows. Nicholas Gasson, as her Dada, was gormlessly miscast as the old man who’s supposed to spot the plot. And between them they skated over so many of Orton’s bombshells and glossed over so many of his innuendos, the play lost much of its perversion.
Jonathan Ashley is the pick of the quartet, playing Kath’s smarmy, ex-army and suspiciously homosexual brother – with his shoulders back and his pelvis thrust forwards, arms flailing like a little Hitler. He at least picked up on the menacing manipulation of the piece…trying to farm Sloane for himself with the promise of a company car some Christmas or other. He carefully constructed a character that was excited by the chase but bombastically oblivious to the warning evidence. There’s no way you’d buy a second hand car from this man.
What the production did get right was the period. The unrootedness of the time comes across very strongly. It was the dawning of a period in which pretence and fantasy were possible once more; the post war good times stripping away the pressing need for responsibility. There were biting lines about racism and sexual peccadilloes that were tightly tied to the decade and consequentially quite painful to hear.
Simon Kenny’s set is stuffed with turn of the 60s utility furniture. It’s piled topsy-turvy all around the acting circle like rocks around a desert island; leaving the cast as landlubbers stranded amidst their own lumber.
I presume the clue is in the company’s title; London Classic Theatre. ‘Entertaining Mr Sloane’ did once fit that bill; but to me a true ‘classic’ is a play that’s as fresh and pertinent now as the day it was written. Unfortunately ‘Mr Sloane’ feels more like a museum piece, worthy of scholarly examination but not exactly a crowd pleaser.
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Visit www.theatresevern.co.uk for bookings & information about Theatre Severn
Image by Sheila Burnett