Entertaining Mr Sloane at Young Vic

There was a time when I was a fairly regular visitor to Young Vic but for various reasons (my changes in employment, their change in artistic directors) I had not been there since 2017 but a Joe Orton play was a good reason to go back.

It was a slow return and it took some good reviews to finally nudge me into booking and that was a non-trivial process due to my poor memory of the seating plan there. 

In the end I went for row P entirely missing that this is the front tow of the Balcony which I would have gone for automatically if I had noticed it. There seat Balcony P35 cost me £57.

The view from there was excellent and the first impression of the set was good too, this was clearly a production with some strong stylish thinking behind it.

Entertaining Mr Sloane has a simple concept, young exuberant Mr. Sloane starts renting a room with lonely middle-aged Kath who is regularly visited by her wheeler-dealer brother Ed. Their elderly father also lived with Kath.

The rich comedy came from the dialogues between the three main characters and the way that Orton wrote their words. The speech comes thick and fast with lots of short sentences that followed each other erratically, much like jokes work but with more natural language.

The stylish staging continued throughout with, for example, Mr Sloane remaining a centre of attention even when not in the scene by posing spotlight off-stage. The ending was equally stylish.

The Joe Orton script gave the play a solid base which the cast and staging enhanced. It was a marvellous return to Young Vic. I suspect it will not be another eight years before I go back.