Funny story: my dad chose to cement his marriage proposal to my mum with a production of Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Last night, I finally saw the method in his madness. In this excellent production the eponymous hero, an enigmatic young thug, exerts his hypnotic influence over both Kath, his sexually voracious yet mothering landlady, and her brother Ed, a besuited (and remarkably hirsute) manager battling his homosexual demons.

Hilarious, tragic and moving in equal measure, Orton’s kitchen sink realism demands versatile, powerful acting and this is precisely where director George Johnston’s interpretation thrives. The exceptionally talented Eleanor Hardy plays Kath with intelligent tones of pathos and cunning; the mock-modesty with which she takes up her knitting needles while wearing a nipple-flaunting nightdress and insisting that her new lodger call her ‘mama’ hints brilliantly at some sort of inverted Oedipus complex. As Mr. Sloane, Stephen Bailey's cock-sure swagger convinced, but the psychological complexity that this violent yet magnetic character requires was sometimes absent, with a perplexing Gollum-esque grimace filling the void. Oliver Marsh, however, perfectly manifested Ed's struggle to control his mutinous sexual desires. His back-lit explosions of spittle in an impassioned rant in the second act were a spectacle to behold, although his baffling choice to incorrectly conjugate verbs such as ‘you says’ and ‘I kicks you’ jarred with his otherwise cut-glass RP delivery.

This production's greatest strength was its impeccable rendering of Orton’s heady mix of black comedy and social satire. Spot-on comic timing did justice to the plethora of wonderful double-entendres at the actors’ disposal, deployed by Marsh with a suitable amount of lascivious hand-wringing, as did the inspired soundtrack that included that wilfully misheard and ever-amusing Hendrix lyric ‘Excuse me while I kiss the sky’. However, the true star of this show was Mr. Sloane’s wardrobe, comprising a leather ensemble worthy of the Village People, and a dangerously thinning pair of white pants. All in all, the perfect play to conclude a marriage proposal delivered in a battered Toyota on the Seven Sisters Road, I’m sure you’ll agree.

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