Entertaining Mister Sloan

Joe Orton wrote this play in London in the 60s, before he had become famous for 'Loot' and 'What the Butler Saw'. It was very much a comment on the social and sexual mores of the pre-Thatcherite era, when the streets were ruled by hardmen like the Krays and polite society turned its back on the underclass. As such, you would expect it to have lost a lot of its shock value in the interim. Nevertheless, it was also first and foremost (if you'll pardon my repetition)a comedy and while the play itself has mellowed, it is still very funny, as this current production in the Packer Studio at the Victorian Arts Centre will testify. The script on its own can be read as quite bland and innocuous, but when interpreted by the seriously bent characters of Orton's world, it jumps off the page. In this production, we see a suitably nasty bunch of mutual exploiters bouncing off each other in an appropriately hilarious fashion. The design suits the intimate space well and quite draws the audient into the time warp of "Ortonia" (to coin an expression). Catch it while in Melbourne to see Don's Party and/or Barry Humphries before Feb 10.