Joe Orton was the enfant terrible of the British theatre during the mid-sixties. His public career only lasted three years from 1964 to 1967, but during this period he both shocked and delighted audiences and the critics with a series of dark and cynical, and often sexually explicit, black comedies. In August 1967 he was bludgeoned to death by his lover Kenneth Halliwell, who then committed suicide.
"Entertaining Mr Sloane" is based upon the play which first brought Orton to the public's attention in 1964. It tells the story of how a young man, the "Mr. Sloane" of the title- we never learn his first name- is invited into the home of a middle-aged brother and sister. The sister, Kath, meets him one morning while he is sunbathing in the cemetery next to her home, and invites him to become her lodger. Kath's brother Ed initially objects to Mr Sloane as a lodger, but he soon takes a liking to the young man and offers him a job as his chauffeur. Indeed Ed, who is a closeted homosexual, takes something more than a liking to Mr Sloane, and the young man quickly becomes the lover of both siblings. The one member of the family whom Sloane is unable to charm is Kemp, Kath and Ed's elderly father who works as the cemetery groundsman. Kemp takes a dislike to him, largely because he recognises him as the man who killed his boss.
There are two wonderful contrasting performances from Beryl Reid and Harry Andrews as the two siblings. Kath and Ed are very different from one another. Kath is slatternly, blowsy and emotionally incontinent, always wearing her heart on her sleeve and making no secret of her obsessive desire for Mr Sloane, with whom she will openly share all the most intimate secrets of her past life. (And she has quite a few, including an illegitimate child).
Ed is uptight and reserved, doubtless due to the need to keep his homosexuality a secret. He dresses smartly and conservatively, probably works in some well-paid white-collar job and can be quite snobbish about his social position. His one concession to the otherwise hidden flamboyant side of his nature is that he drives a bright pink Pontiac Parisienne convertible, and makes Sloane (dressed in a tight leather uniform) his chauffeur. Andrews, normally seen as a "character actor" in supporting roles, was here making a rare appearance in a leading one. You could argue that, at 59, he was too old for the part- he was only five years younger than Alan Webb, who plays his father- but watching the film I hardly noticed.
Peter McEnery as Sloane gives an unsubtle performance, but in an Orton play this perhaps does not matter. You never really get the impression that he is anything other than a handsome thug and you wonder how he managed to insinuate his way into the good graces of Kath and Ed when there is nothing insinuating about him. On the other hand, McEnery was strikingly good looking, and director Douglas Hickox may have been trying to suggest that the siblings were so blinded by pure lust for him that they managed to overlook his obvious thuggishness.
The manner of Orton's murder may have been shocking but it cemented his reputation as an edgy, transgressive writer, and in the years following his death he became even more of a cult figure than he had been while alive. In the sixties the British theatre was in some ways more liberal than the cinema, and it is hard to imagine a film like this being made in 1964, the year when the play was first produced. Things, however, were changing quickly and by 1970 it was no longer taboo to make a film focussing on homosexuality and nymphomania, and in which a murderer is allowed to go unpunished. The film must, however, have seemed very controversial and even shocking at the time to many cinema-goers.
More than fifty years on we have become used to far worse things in the cinema, and a film like "Entertaining Mr Sloane" no longer seems shocking, except perhaps to those of a particularly puritanical disposition. That is, perhaps, all to the good. We can look beyond the controversy and the shock factor and see Orton's writing for what it is- mordant, cynical and very funny. 8/10.
"Entertaining Mr Sloane" is based upon the play which first brought Orton to the public's attention in 1964. It tells the story of how a young man, the "Mr. Sloane" of the title- we never learn his first name- is invited into the home of a middle-aged brother and sister. The sister, Kath, meets him one morning while he is sunbathing in the cemetery next to her home, and invites him to become her lodger. Kath's brother Ed initially objects to Mr Sloane as a lodger, but he soon takes a liking to the young man and offers him a job as his chauffeur. Indeed Ed, who is a closeted homosexual, takes something more than a liking to Mr Sloane, and the young man quickly becomes the lover of both siblings. The one member of the family whom Sloane is unable to charm is Kemp, Kath and Ed's elderly father who works as the cemetery groundsman. Kemp takes a dislike to him, largely because he recognises him as the man who killed his boss.
There are two wonderful contrasting performances from Beryl Reid and Harry Andrews as the two siblings. Kath and Ed are very different from one another. Kath is slatternly, blowsy and emotionally incontinent, always wearing her heart on her sleeve and making no secret of her obsessive desire for Mr Sloane, with whom she will openly share all the most intimate secrets of her past life. (And she has quite a few, including an illegitimate child).
Ed is uptight and reserved, doubtless due to the need to keep his homosexuality a secret. He dresses smartly and conservatively, probably works in some well-paid white-collar job and can be quite snobbish about his social position. His one concession to the otherwise hidden flamboyant side of his nature is that he drives a bright pink Pontiac Parisienne convertible, and makes Sloane (dressed in a tight leather uniform) his chauffeur. Andrews, normally seen as a "character actor" in supporting roles, was here making a rare appearance in a leading one. You could argue that, at 59, he was too old for the part- he was only five years younger than Alan Webb, who plays his father- but watching the film I hardly noticed.
Peter McEnery as Sloane gives an unsubtle performance, but in an Orton play this perhaps does not matter. You never really get the impression that he is anything other than a handsome thug and you wonder how he managed to insinuate his way into the good graces of Kath and Ed when there is nothing insinuating about him. On the other hand, McEnery was strikingly good looking, and director Douglas Hickox may have been trying to suggest that the siblings were so blinded by pure lust for him that they managed to overlook his obvious thuggishness.
The manner of Orton's murder may have been shocking but it cemented his reputation as an edgy, transgressive writer, and in the years following his death he became even more of a cult figure than he had been while alive. In the sixties the British theatre was in some ways more liberal than the cinema, and it is hard to imagine a film like this being made in 1964, the year when the play was first produced. Things, however, were changing quickly and by 1970 it was no longer taboo to make a film focussing on homosexuality and nymphomania, and in which a murderer is allowed to go unpunished. The film must, however, have seemed very controversial and even shocking at the time to many cinema-goers.
More than fifty years on we have become used to far worse things in the cinema, and a film like "Entertaining Mr Sloane" no longer seems shocking, except perhaps to those of a particularly puritanical disposition. That is, perhaps, all to the good. We can look beyond the controversy and the shock factor and see Orton's writing for what it is- mordant, cynical and very funny. 8/10.