Entertaining Mr Sloane at the Young Vic – review

Nadia Fall opens her tenure as Young Vic artistic director with a welcome revival of Joe Orton’s 1964 black comedy, which hasn’t been seen in the capital for over 15 years. And in a nice moment of continuation, it sees her reunite with Tamzin Outhwaite after their riotous collaboration on Abigail’s Party, which marked Fall’s swansong as AD of Stratford East.

Here Outhwaite plays Kath, the landlady of a ramshackle house on the edge of a rubbish tip, represented in Peter McKintosh’s in-the-round design by scattered chairs, prams and other paraphernalia, which encircle the stage and hang above it. Into this very humble abode walks new lodger Mr Sloane (Jordan Stephens, of Rizzle Kicks fame), a charmer who soon finds himself at the centre of a sort-of love triangle with Kath and her brother Ed (Daniel Cerqueira). But their near-blind father (Christopher Fairbank) can see straight through him, for which he will pay a heavy price.

Fall’s production plays a pretty straight bat but wrings plenty of laughs, mainly from Outhwaite’s outrageously flirtatious Kath, whose false teeth have a habit of popping out at inconvenient moments. There are some stylish touches, particularly the use of a green spotlight (the lighting designer is Richard Howell), which profiles Sloane while he’s offstage, and a strobe-lit dance sequence to open the second act, but overall it feels reverent rather than revisionist.

Orton was writing in the final years of the Lord Chamberlain, and it’s easy to forget how close he was sailing to the censorship wind. But the play still has the power to shock, albeit in smaller ways. Seeing it for the first time, I was struck by the extent to which Kath’s attraction to Sloane is incestuously linked to her mourning of a lost son; she refers to herself as Mama and calls him a “heavy baby”. Ed’s misogynistic revulsion at his sister’s sexuality is also troubling, and there’s some racist language directed at immigrants that feels sadly pertinent.

The cast combines well, including Stephens, who gives an accomplished stage acting debut. Although he could dial up the menacing aspects of the character – he never quite convinces as a man capable of killing – he has an enjoyably understated comic delivery and successfully hints at the boyish vulnerability underneath Sloane’s leather-clad exterior. Outhwaite meanwhile embodies the louche lustiness of Kath, whose air of cornered desperation is reminiscent of Mike Leigh’s Bev, and nicely contrasts with the besuited, chain-smoking Cerqueira and Steptoe-ish Fairbank. All told, it’s an enjoyable, if concurrently rather cautious, kick off for the Fall regime.