[In the following review, Duplain points to the well-structured plot and comic timing of Entertaining Mr. Sloane.]

“Three repulsive folk well acted”: for once the tone of twee outrage about the state of British morals in the theatre was not being whipped up by Edna Welthorpe (Mrs.) or another of Joe Orton's epistolary aliases. Even as his stomach turned, a contemporary critic (for the Daily Telegraph) had acknowledged what a well-structured play Entertaining Mr. Sloane is. And it is the unwinding of a tight plot with mercenary logic that still gives an edge to the play (which was first performed in 1964), even if the comic shock of carnal scheming in suburbia has been dulled by almost three decades of television satire and social liberalization. Some lines, however, are so well written that, like Wildean aphorisms, they have taken on a life outside of their original context and it is a surprise to discover their source. When Kath longs for Sloane to be present at the birth of their baby, her brother Ed (Ian Gelder) observes, “It's enough for most children if the father is there at the conception”. And a line like “You showed him the gates of hell every night—he abandoned all hope when he entered there”, still gathers laughs for its urbane daring in mixing high art and smut.

Janet Dale's Kath is an outsize motherly schoolgirl, alternating between the wide-eyed stares of the highly impressionable and the pursed lips of the shocked worldly-wise who would prefer to know no more. Her front room, in Mark Bailey's design, is wallpapered with huge pink roses, the sloping flats hinting at the claustrophobic cosiness of it all. Mr. Sloane (Ben Daniels) is the orphan whom she plans to use to two ends: to replace the child she had adopted twenty years earlier, and as the lover forbidden her by Ed's “principles”. As soon as Sloane has taken a room in her house, Kath moves in on him, positioning his hand on the small of her back for the first embrace, borrowing his finger as a pointer when the photograph album comes out. Well-groomed and keen to please, Sloane soon catches on and in the first act finale, on the sofa, opportunity gets the better of distaste. Soon he has discarded his jeans in favour of leather trousers (those fresh Levis were the one detail out of place in an otherwise excellent period production) and appears to have gained a good few inches of loutishness, strutting from radiogram to sofa and running the household. In Orton's world, everyone has a past and kicks out ruthlessly to get as near to the top of the heap as possible. Sloane's nemesis is Kemp (Christopher Hancock), Kath and Ed's gaga old “dada”, who was witness to a nasty bit of business involving his daughter's new lodger. Kath takes a long time to realize she can corner people too, but when she does she quickly learns the benefits of pragmatism.

The director, Jeremy Sams, is best known for his musical work in the theatre, but here he has taken on a well-made play pure and simple. Ironically, the one purely musical interpolation is misjudged. A stuck record is used to imply that Kath feels a qualm about her time-share arrangement with Ed for the use of Mr. Sloane, whereas everything in the text shows she is perfectly happy playing a new, more devious game.

What Sams does do well is bring out the nastiness behind the niceties, as when Sloane thinks he has Ed's permission to rough up Kemp. Then, almost instantaneously, his anger is undercut by a brilliant burst of farce as Sloane loses his cool and goes for Kath, who juggles his suitcase across the sofa to Ed, thus preventing Sloane's departure and forcing him to face the music. Moments like that, and the demeaning comedy around Kath's dentures, prefigure Orton's later plays, Loot and What The Butler Saw, where the struggle between appearances and self-interest get completely out of control.