Entertaining Mr Sloane, Young Vic review - funny, flawed but welcome nonetheless

Playwright Joe Orton was a merry prankster. His main work – such as Loot (1965) and What the Butler Saw (1969) – was provocative, taboo-tickling and often wildly hilarious.

Now the Young Vic is staging a revival of his debut, Entertaining Mr Sloane, directed by this venue’s new supremo Nadia Fall, and starring celebrity polymath Jordan Stephens. But does 1960s provocation still resonate today?

Well yes and well, no. While this play still has the ability, sporadically, to disturb, the passing of time also means that some of Orton’s attitudes have not aged well. So even the casting of hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks’s Stephens, who is a highly successful mental health campaigner and children’s author, and is making his stage debut here, isn’t enough to make this show really rock. 

First produced in 1964, when the Guardian called it a “milk-curdling essay in lower-middle-class nihilism”, Entertaining Mr Sloane tells an engagingly simple story. Sloane, a 20-year-old orphan, answers a “room to let” advert put up by 41-year-old “widow” Kath, who lives with her dad Kemp and brother Ed. It’s an apparently respectable Cockney family where once a teen pregnancy resulted in the child being given up for adoption, but where money is now coming in from shady criminality. At first the sexy Sloane is welcomed by the emotionally starved Kath and Ed, but things get complicated when Kemp reveals that the newcomer has his own murky past. Violence ensues. 

Fall’s production is designed by Peter McKintosh and features a homely carpeted circular stage surrounded by the debris of urban decay – such as prams, bedsteads and buckets – all burnt, blasted and buried in grey, a metaphor for the discarded hopes, and cruel realities, of British society in the early 1960s. Above this exposed arena, which suggests a Pinteresque struggle for territorial control, there’s even more junk, suspended like an art installation by Cornelia Parker, exploding in the air, a visual comment on the dump where the characters live. The retro clothing puts the action back into the 1960s, which in some ways tames part of the edgy relevance of the play. Orton articulates Sloane’s sex appeal through dialogues that explore the power dynamics of the family, with Ed upset by his father’s rejection of him, but passionate in his domination of Kath, as well as the gender fluidity in a situation where both of the middle-aged siblings are attracted to the young man. Sloane, dressed at first in a cuddly cardigan, soon graduates to leathers as his initial faux humility is stripped off to reveal his inner desperation. And anger. The openly incestuous way in which Kath calls herself his Mum, and the power that Ed exerts over him when he employs him as his chauffeur, underline the loneliness of these people.  

Orton’s familiar epigrammatic style is still rather underdeveloped in Entertaining Mr Sloane, which nevertheless buzzes with double meanings and suggestive subtext. From the “I’m in the rude” British Carry On humour to the deliberately and ludicrously OTT declarations by Ed and Sloane as they discuss murder and sexuality, this is – on one level – a fun evening. As well as psychological perceptiveness – from Kath’s maternal feelings for Sloane being linked to her loss of her baby and Ed’s disgust at his sister’s mature sexuality – there is a wonderful feeling of disrespect for social conventions. And although Fall doesn’t underline the most farcical moments of the play, and tends to emphasize some obvious points by using unnecessarily literal stage and off-stage images, some of the material is gratingly gratuitous. 

When talking about Kath, and any offstage women, Orton gives the men such realistically misogynistic remarks that it sounds troublingly like he agrees with them. He also likes his uncalled-for rape comment, and the racist remarks about non-white immigrants have a contemporary resonance that is a real turn-off. If the 1960s sense that modern individuals must ruthlessly pursue their individual satisfaction comes across even more strongly in today’s world, and Orton’s highly artificial language still shimmers in its parodying of clichés and idioms, perhaps the main gesture of the play is that our laughter often sticks in our throats. You can admire the rebel vigour of Orton’s writing, while raising an eyebrow at his questionable taste. 

At the centre of the drama is Sloane so how does Stephens depict this ambiguous character, who is partly innocent and partly psychotic? At first, he is suitably demure and needy, his rather quiet sex appeal smoulders nicely. In the more energetic episodes, as when he does a comic workout or dances to an electro-strobe musical interlude, he shines. I like the way he turns from reptilian gyrations to boxing postures and wild dance. But he’s less impressive when it comes to giving a coherent and detailed reading of Sloane’s subtle shifts between manipulatively playing the innocent and exposing his true ugly self. Too often he’s detached to the point of indifference, and I never get the feeling of Sloane’s danger – his horribly damaged and sinister side. Stephens is a soft psycho.

On the other hand, the rest of the cast is excellent. Tamzin Outhwaite vivid performance brilliantly portrays Kath both comically and convincingly as a mature woman whose sexual desperation is a cry of revolt against all the oppressive men in her life. Her desire for Sloane is shown as simultaneously ridiculous and a heartbreaking result of absolute loneliness. She also comes across as a canny individual. And, when she loses her false teeth, a very vulnerable one. Similarly Daniel Cerqueira’s Ed (pictured above) has a powerful stage presence, both menacingly macho and disturbingly uncertain of his own desires, while Christopher Fairbank’s dishevelled and grumbling Kemp is also utterly convincing. Unseen in London for more than 15 years, this – for all its faults – is a welcome revival.

• Entertaining Mr Sloane at the Young Vic until 8 November 
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk

@AleksSierz