'Entertaining Mr Sloane' at the Trafalgar Studios

Tonight was the turn of 'Entertaining Mr Sloane' at the Trafalgar Studios at the top of Whitehall, somewhere I've walked past hundreds of times but not been in. Mr Sloane is a creation of Joe Orton from the early '60s and it was his job to shock the audience with his hideously amoral but beautiful lead character, a precursor of the Me Generation where anything is fine so long as it's what he wants. The play is a four-hander and stars Imelda Staunton and Mathew Horne.

The story is straight-forward, a young man (Mathew Horne) in need of lodgings is offered a room in a house by a middle aged woman (Imelda Staunton) who lives with her father. Obviously, she has a past and so does the young man. She clearly wants to shag the youngster and, when her brother calls at the house, so does he. There are lots of twists and turns and the sex between the lad and the woman is obvious, but slightly more subtle (-ish) is the brother's almost puritanical lust although the play is laden with double-entendres that everyone understands without naming the lust that dare not speak it's name. The violent ending is signalled but I wasn't expecting the deal between brother and sister after the death of their father.

I'm not sure what to make of the play. It's obviously dated and the character of the middle aged woman is a bit of a stereotype but one that was prevalent throughout the '60s and '70s and personified by Yootha Joyce in '70s sitcoms. I thought Imelda Staunton was excellent as Kath, clearly living in her own world, fawning over Mr Sloane and referring to herself as his mum despite shagging him and falling pregnant. I was less impressed by Mathew Horne who didn't radiate the charisma the character needs and had a rather declamatory style of speaking which was really obvious in scenes with the other male actors.

Overall it's an enjoyable play and well played. The set reminded me a bit of my Grandma's living room. and the scene with Imelda in a see-through nightie will stay with me for a while. There were two disappointments: firstly, the downstairs bar staff were the slowest I've seen in quite a while (although we did get generous JDs) and, secondly, to find that the snow had stopped falling while we'd been in the theatre and had failed to lie on the ground. Sigh....