Tamzin Outhwaite as Kath
Entertaining Mr Sloane
Young Vic Theatre, London, September 2025
Photo by Ellie Kurttz
107 – Entertaining Mr Sloane by Joe Orton
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The curtain rises on the lounge of a modest house in a working-class neighbourhood in England in the early 1960s. A young man is being shown around a house with a view to his renting a room. The middle-aged landlady seems keen for the man to accept the offer; indeed, he senses opportunities in her suggestive invitation. The lodger, Mr Sloane, soon occupies pride of place in the house, playing off his landlady and her controlling brother in a slippery game of sexual sparring, a gambit that takes a deadly turn when the cuckoo in the family nest lashes out.
This is Joe Orton’s outrageous 1964 sexual and social farce, Entertaining Mr Sloane. With this play Orton burst on to the dramatic scene with his unique blend of iconoclastic social satire and provocative sexual comedy, like a ramped-up Oscar Wilde let loose in the emerging age of free love. It may be that Joe Orton is now remembered as much for his rebellious life and his violent death than for his plays, such as Entertaining Mr Sloane, Loot and What the Butler Saw, particularly following the publication of John Lahr’s biography, Prick up your Ears, which also spawned the 1987 film of the same name written by Alan Bennett and starring Gary Oldman.
When Entertaining Mr Sloane first played in London and New York, it offended many established critics. In response to the outrage in the press, the play’s producers ran ads promoting the play featuring the warning, “this play is not suitable for the narrow-minded.”
I have long wanted to cover Orton on the podcast, and I was prompted to start with this play by the recent revival at the Young Vic theatre here in London. I am joined to review Orton’s shameless black comedy by an Orton enthusiast and expert, Dr Emma Parker, Associate Professor of English at the University of Leicester,
Dr Emma Parker
Dr Emma Parker is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Leicester, where she works on Twentieth Century and contemporary literature, and has a special interest in gender and sexuality. Her special engagement with Joe Orton includes her penning the excellent introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Entertaining Mr Sloane, published by Methuen Drama in 2014, as well essays on Orton and Shakespeare, and on Orton and his connections with the city of Leicester. She is currently writing a book called Joe Orton and the Queer Art of Offence.
Emma recommended Prima Facie and Inter Alia by Susie Miller.
The Footnotes that accompany our episode on Joe Orton’s classic black comedy, Entertaining Mr Sloane, include additional notes on Orton’s alter-ego Edna Welthorpe, the language of keeping up appearances, Sloane’s lack of innocence, and the character of Kemp.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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