“Entertaining Mr Sloane” at the Young Vic

Jeremy Malies on the South Bank
28 September 2025
★★★★

Looking at Peter McKintosh’s design for this revival of Joe Orton’s 1964 play you could be forgiven for thinking that it was Pinter’s The Caretaker which had premiered four years earlier and featured a scrap-filled tenement.

Photo credit Ellie Kurttz.
Jordan Stephens, Tamzin Outhwaite and Daniel Cerqueira.

As the title character in the Orton, Jordan Stephens asks if his new lodgings are a rubbish dump so McKintosh and Nadia Fall (incoming artistic chief at the Young Vic and directing her first play at the venue) are justified in their decision to bestrew stage apron and the space above with monochrome junk. The Pinter parallels continue as, towards the end, Stephens attacks his landlady’s aged and part-blind father in a scene that is pure menace though not particularly comedic despite black humour.

Mr Sloane is looking for lodgings and has stumbled across the house of Kath played by Tamzin Outhwaite (Foyle’s War, Murder Is Easy) whose acting here is inventive, detailed, droll, and naturalistic apart from phases when Fall opts for expressionism. Kath’s father Kemp (Christopher Fairbank) thinks Mr Sloane fits the profile of a murderer from some years back.

Kath’s brother Ed, played by Daniel Cerqueira, takes a shine to Sloane. Cerqueira is perhaps the standout in a wonderful cast as he mines Orton’s gay humour. He wants to be behind Sloane all the way and help him to pull things off – so to speak. When Ed speculates that Sloane might look good in tight leather jeans straight against his skin, costume design (also by McKintosh) soon has him gyrating in a pair. Kath is able to get Sloane’s trousers off pronto and feel his thighs. (“I shall be so ashamed in the morning.”)

And Stephens – he collaborates with Harley Alexander-Sule in hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks – combines well with Outhwaite in the sex scenes that are sensual while always lurching towards the comedic. They are also of course stomach-churning because Sloane is, well, oddly familiar to the family group. Outhwaite wins the comic acting chops if only for scenes in which she pretends to be missing a complete set of false teeth. And I marvelled at her facility for looking hurt on a whim. Cerqueira balances his character’s abject need of Sloane (“I want you on tap”) while bossing the family unit as a prosperous man of business.

There were gasps at some of the lines that have become unusually topical such as Kemp reflecting on immigration. “They do come over here raping people – they should send them back!” I’ll confess that, uncharitably, I thought this was an insertion by Fall but rereading the text revealed the line as well as an eerie reference to the Anti-Jewish League.

Maybe I’m a sucker for Carole King, Ruby Murray, and the major tracks from South Pacific – the incidental music hit all the right buttons for me. And yet Fall makes some odd decisions. Amid the period detail in the text such as glancing references to the Profumo affair, Lord Snowdon’s photography, and characters not being sure if capital punishment is still on the statute, we are confronted with Richard Howell’s green strobe lighting as Sloane performs a disco dancing routine.

Later, a sickly green light covers Sloane as he does dumb show routines at the rear of a central exit from the stage. I had a seat opposite the exit and could take in all this while also watching the other characters. If you were less central it would be irritating to have to divide your attention. And when Stephens goes through an extended (if impressive) set of push-ups close to us, he appears to be on an odd method acting journey of his own though this is of course Fall’s positioning choice.

The revolve in McKintosh’s set is underused as the disc-shaped performance space, covered in tatty Persian carpet, spins slowly at random moments. It certainly doesn’t tally with the overall momentum of the plot. But elsewhere the set design is witty, notably trappings for a spoof bondage and tug of war scene (I could even tolerate the music being Kylie) at the end of which brother and sister agree to share Mr Sloane for six months at a time.

Orton was dead at the age of 34 only three years after this play premiered. Jealous of his partner’s success, lover Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned him nine times with a hammer. The writer’s linguistic inventiveness, ear for London idiom, and deft handling of gay humour stand up better and better. Fall’s version is flawed but all of Orton’s work is a sustained high wire act, so she is allowed a few slips and duff moments. It’s a valid approach to a seminal text in queer history.

You have to hope that a successful run (business at the box office did not appear brisk) will lead to revivals of the other plays. When Alan Bennett opts to do gay smut, he approaches the same innuendo content. But Orton’s voice and tone are unique. Nobody else has worked like this and despite its occasional lurches into clunkiness I enjoyed the production immensely.