Theatre review: Entertaining Mr Sloane

Nadia Fall moves from Stratford to Southwark, and launches her time at the Young Vic with Entertaining Mr Sloane, Joe Orton's first full-length play that feels like Pinter played as farce. It's a comparison that Peter McKintosh's design particularly calls to mind: The in-the-round set is surrounded by junk, not just around the stage but hanging perilously over it, reminding us that this twisted version of a 1960s suburban house stands alone in the middle of a scrapheap. Kath (Tamzin Outhwaite) brings back Mr Sloane (Jordan Stephens,) a young man she met in a library and offered to let out the spare room to. When she was very young Kath had a husband and a baby son, and lost both of them; she's decided that the new lodger is going to be a replacement figure for both, and the fact that she tries to seduce him while asking that he call her "mama" isn't the only creepy thing that'll happen while he's there.

Stage-to-screen review: What the Butler Saw

A second virtual trip to Leicester, where the Curve Theatre has actually been ahead of the curve so to speak as one of the first venues to get its online alternative to live performances up and running. As with Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual the next show they've made available has a Leicester connection, as it was the birthplace of Joe Orton (I don't think he had much good to say about the place, but in fairness he was Joe Orton, he didn't have much good to say about anything.) What the Butler Saw was his final play, in which he delivers every beat of the perfect farce while breaking all the genre's unwritten rules. The setting is the Hampstead mental health clinic run by Dr Prentice (Rufus Hound) and his wife, and as the curtain rises the doctor is "interviewing" prospective secretary Geraldine (Dakota Blue Richards,) a process which involves making her strip for a medical examination with a view to sexually assaulting her.

Theatre review: The Ruffian on the Stair

The similarities between Joe Orton and Harold Pinter's work don’t always jump out at you, but timing is everything and the Hope Theatre’s production of The Ruffian on the Stair comes near the end of Jamie Lloyd’s Pinter at the Pinter season, specifically after The Room. Written as a radio play (and later revised for the stage) in 1963, it’s hard not to see The Ruffian on the Stair as a response to Pinter’s debut from a few years earlier. Both short plays are set in a poky apartment in a larger building, in which the lady of the house is terrorised by unwelcome visitor(s) when her husband is out, driving a van for what is probably some nefarious purpose (although in Orton’s case, the purpose is eventually made very clear.) Joyce (Lucy Benjamin) is a former (and possibly current) prostitute now living with Mike (Gary Webster,) whom she calls her husband - although whether or not they’re actually married seems up for debate.

Theatre review: Loot

What Joe Orton did to farce in What The Butler Saw, he does to black comedy in Loot: Deconstruct the genre by taking it to its logical extreme, so we get jokes about rape and child prostitutes, and the naked corpse of an old woman being unceremoniously dragged around the stage. But despite being the first UK staging to restore Orton’s original text with all the censored stuff back in place, what Michael Fentiman’s 50th anniversary production ends up most memorable for is the sharpness of the dialogue. McLeavy’s (Ian Redford) wife died three days ago, and her body is laid out for the last time in their house. Last night his son Hal (Sam Frenchum) robbed a bank with his best friend/boyfriend Dennis (Calvin Demba,) and the loot is stored in a cupboard. Then Inspector Truscott (Christopher Fulford) arrives, demanding to search the house.

Theatre review: What the Butler Saw

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This one opens to the press next week.

Farce is definitely back in fashion at the moment and the latest classic to get a revival is Joe Orton's typically twisted take on the genre, What the Butler Saw. Sean Foley, fresh from success with The Ladykillers, directs a cast of familiar faces at the Vaudeville. Tim McInnerny is Dr Prentice, the randy head of a psychiatric clinic, whose interview of potential new secretary Geraldine (Georgia Moffett) includes a full medical checkup, for which they will both need to remove some clothing. When his wife (Samantha Bond) arrives unexpectedly, Geraldine becomes only the first of a number of half-naked people Prentice will end up trying to hide, soon to be joined by Nicholas (Nick Hendrix,) the bell-boy from a seedy nearby hotel, and Sergeant Match (Jason Thorpe,) who's looking into crimes Geraldine and Nicholas may be connected with. The final complication is Dr Rance (Omid Djalili,) here to inspect the clinic, but mainly concerned with interpreting the various dodgy goings-on in terms of bizarre mental illnesses he can put into a book.