L O N D O N
Opened on the 17th of April 1975 and ended its run on the 21st of August 1975.
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presents
BERYL REID |
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Photo 1: Sloane puckishly ignores Kemp, another image of death in Kath's cluttered household. Photo 2: Kath offers Mr. Sloane more than hospitality. Photo 3: Beryl Reid and Malcolm McDowell. Photo 4: Malcolm McDowell as Mr. Sloane. Photo 5: Sloane and Kath. |
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THE PLAY:
"Sloane was the first play to dramatize the psychopathic style of the 60's - that ruthless, restless, single-minded pursuit of satisfaction - transformed by drugs and rock music into myth. Eddie was the central pivot of the play. His stalking of the boy's (Sloane) arse was as funny and wildly alarming as Kath's stalking of his cock. Sloane has killed one man when he walks into Kath's house looking for a room to let. By the time the play is over, he will have dispatched a second - Kath's father - only to be blackmailed into bed by Kath and her brother, Ed."
JOE ORTON ON THE CHARACTER OF SLOANE:
"Sloane feels no guilt and his refusal to experience shame is what disturbs and amuses audiences. Sloane is a survivor whose egotism is rewarded, not punished. Sloane knows Eddie wants him. He has absolutely no qualms about surrendering his body. None. He has done it many, many times. Sloane is no virgin. He's been in bed with men and women in the past. But he isn't going to give it until he has to. And while he can get away with...riding around in cars, just fucking Kath a couple of times a week, getting paid a good salary, why should he give up a trump card. Eddie, naturally, doesn't know how amoral Sloane is. He imagines that he has a virgin on his hands. He thinks he can get Sloane. Sure he can. But it may take a bit of time - cause Sloane is such a nice kid."
Source: Orton: The Complete Plays (1976), p. 16.
REVIEW BY JOHN LAHR:
Plays and Players, June 1975.
Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Orton's first produced play (1963), puckishly yanks the life and death instincts together and lets them create comic mayhem. Survival is a practical business, and Entertaining Mr. Sloane dramatises the hilarious amorality of homo sapiens. It is a play about voracious apetite stoked by the deadness of an encroaching wasteland. Everybody on Orton's stage is ravenous to satisfy their sexual hunger. Sexuality, as Orton knows, is a ruthless, pragmatic and mysterious powerful force.
In Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Kath (Beryl Reid) and her brother, Ed (Ronald Fraser), vie for the affection of the lodger, Mr. Sloane (Malcolm McDowell) - a slick, psychopathic character who is using them for his entertainment. Sloane is polymorphous and definitely perverse. He has killed a man; and when Kath's aged father puts a finger on him, Sloane dispatches the codger with his boot, an incident which allows Kath and Ed to blackmail him into their beds.
The Royal Court revival is Beryl Reid's triumph. She gives Kath hilarious immediacy, swooping and fluttering around Sloane like a hawk disguised as a budgerigar. Miss Reid is older than Kath is supposed to be, but her age is a tremendous asset. Her veined hands, her rubbery and sagging flesh have a texture of decay; and so her pursuit of life has both panic and pathos in it. 'I've been doing my washing today and I haven't had a stitch on,' she confides, clutching at her skin and doing a little turn around for Sloane. 'Except my shoes...I'm in the nude under this dress. I tell you because you're bound to have noticed.' Miss Reid's comic instinct's are golden. When Sloane reaches up and grabs her breast, she leans forward, exposing more of her voluminous bosoms while cooing her reprimand: 'Mr. Sloane - don't betray your trust.' Like her house, Kath's language is cluttered with a junky elegance that reveals rather than disguises a deeper impoverishment.
Bery Reid's virtuoso playing finds all of Orton's jokes and makes them pay. She can tease a line as well as Orton can tease an audience. 'Have a bath if you want to, dear,' she calls after Sloane. 'Treat the conveniences as if they were your own.' Ms. Reid's stalking of Sloane is scintillating because the audience can't pigeonhole her character and anticipate her actions. This kind of surprise is what Orton was after. 'What I wanted to do in Sloane,' Orton said, 'was to break down the sexual compartments people have,' His play achieves this but, sadly, the Royal Court production does not.
The casting betrays Orton's intention, especially Ronald Fraser's fustian approach to Eddie. A good actor, Fraser has either been directed badly or simply not directed. He is stereotype in a play that's supposed to deny them. He enters wearing a bow tie, pinky ring and ID bracelet. He has more cloth flapping from his pockets and cuffs than Sir Fopling Flutter. Poncing, spritzing, posturing - there is no surprise and nothing to discover in the character since the side of the street he cruises is clear from the start. Eddie is meant to be bisexual and butch: Fraser's misinterpretation throws Orton's fun machine off-kilter. The caricature gets laughs but diminishes the play. The pace slackens when Eddie is alone with Sloane. There is no duel, no game of slap and tickle between Eddie and Sloane. Without this tension, the laughter misses the hard edge of Orton's idea.
Sloane is played by Malcolm McDowell, returning to the stage after seven years in films. Faced with Fraser's high-camp fussing, the cunning in McDowell's aloofness is glossed. McDowell has an almond-eyed, shrewd face and lean physique that are right for Sloane; but he has a strangely unsexual presence. There is nothing lethal about him on stage. He acts at being charming instead of exuding that natural, seductive feline sexuality that makes Sloane as riveting and protean as he is in text.
Orton's wit still shines gleefully through the inadequacies of characterisations. The audience laugh at the play and applaud it; but the weak hand of director Roger Croucher is felt everywhere in the production. Despite the patina of professionalism, Croucher pulls back from facing the cruelty which is crucial to Orton's brace comedy. Orton has a festival spirit; but as Nietzche observed, 'Without cruelty, no feast.' Croucher decorates the opening of each act with a slick and superfluous song about Sloane composed and sung by Georgie Fame. He allows the Dadda (another image of death inside Kath's house where life is so rapaciously hunted) to look the same age as his daughter and to move like a spry old man instead of the decrepit bag of bones Orton intends.
Review contributed by Susan Billingsley and Dorian Leveque.
MISC. INFORMATION:
- "It started out just like any other performance of the play, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, in London's West End. Stars Malcolm McDowell and Beryl Reid were playing a seduction scene which was pretty hot stuff and often left the audience a little pop-eyed. This performance, however, the action turned out to be the audience - specifically two young lovers, inspired no doubt by the eroticism on stage, staged their own love-making scene that thoroughly unsettled the performers. "It got so bad that we were watcing them and couldn't concentrate on the play," complained star McDowell. The couple, when asked to move by management, thanked them politely, said they had finished and were going home, whereupon McDowell and Reid resumed the action. The show must go on!"
-"The Stars were in the Audience," Modern Screen, October 1975. Thanks Daria!
- Although the play received good reviews and attracted audiences, "Malcolm McDowell was dissatisfied with the production and refused to transfer it to the West End unless Lindsay Anderson redirected it."
Anderson did, uncredited.
"By encouraging the actors to play for easy laughs, the original director diluted Orton's subtext. By staging Sloane 'perfectly seriously', as Orton wished, Lindsay exposed it; and Malcolm found the result 'truer and funnier.' 1
- Entertaining Mr. Sloane was revived as part of the 'Joe Orton Festival' at the Royal Court Theatre, London, subsequently transferring to the Duke of York's Theatre.
- Last performance at the Royal Court before transferring to the Duke of York's Theatre: 24th May 1975.
- Opening performance at Duke of York's: 2nd June 1975, closing performance: 21st August 1975.
- Malcolm was appearing in this play when "Royal Flash" was released.
- The Beryl Reid Show: Beryl Reid starred in a programme which featured some of her own famous comedy characters and one of her special guests was Malcolm McDowell. Malcolm and Beryl enacted a scene from the play. Aired on December 12, 1977, BBC 2.
Notes:
1. Gavin Lambert, Mainly about Lindsay Anderson, pp. 195-196.
Information & pictures (1, 2, 3) from Dorian.