Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane is a spiky and unnerving play - one that delights in amusing, confusing and exhausting its audience. It is also a cold play at heart and its slippery, cynical take on reality makes it hard to engage with but harder still to forget.  Orton’s fascination with the innate contradictions in life – the fine line between success and failure, attraction and disgust, a caress and a punch – simmers beneath his script. This company recognises the delicate balancing act that Orton’s play demands and the production stretches elastically between entertaining farce and shocking reality.

The play is set in a near wasteland; the first and only house on an abandoned road, after the builders just ‘gave up’. It is here that Imelda Staunton’s Kath counts out her hours, bickering with her decaying father and cowering from her cruel brother Ed. Their cramped lives are blown apart by the arrival of lodger Mr Sloane; a man who despite his confidence, seems to jump at the slightest sound or mention of his past. Orton has devised a remarkably claustrophobic set-up here – a ticking time bomb of deception and fear that is set off as soon as the play begins. 

This is a hard piece to get right – the tone turns on a knife-edge and it requires bright actors with a light touch to pull it off. Thankfully the casting is spot on and this quirky company play their roles with clinical precision and obscure charm. Imelda Staunton is impressively composed as the repressed, but horny Kath: sometimes in control but always horribly and stupidly vulnerable, passionate but repellent, profoundly innocent yet rotten at her core. Staunton embraces this mass of contradictions with confidence and flair; it makes for an exceptionally surprising performance, which entertains and appals in equal measure.

The real joy and frustration of this play is the ease at which its characters transform. This constant shifting starts to lose its appeal in the second half; perhaps the audience’s capacity for surprise dries up. After a while, one longs for something solid to hold onto – but the play instead veers into farce and the characters begin to spin out of control. In these final scenes the initial suggestion of violence becomes a reality: this release of violence is less powerful than its promise (and is not helped by some fairly unconvincing stage blood) and the play loses its punch in the process.

There is still a great deal to admire here though and until these later, more explicit scenes, it feels like anything could happen. The actors delight in the freedom afforded by this unpredictable script and take every opportunity to baffle their audience. Matthew Horne is versatile and subtle as Mr Sloane, slipping between a catalogue of personas as he carefully manipulates everyone that he meets. Simon Paisley Day is physically enthralling as brother Ed; his jaunty movements suggest a life crammed with conflict – of urges denied - as he prowls across the stage in great awkward leaps that fall somewhere between a Nazi march and a John Cleese impression.

The standout performance comes from Richard Bremner as the dying and near-forgotten father Kemp. For all the virtuosity of the chameleon performances on display here, Bremner’s skill is in his consistency. His stubborn refusal to play the game and continue this chain of manipulation – and the isolation this decision creates – is terribly sad to watch.

It is no coincidence that Bremner’s performance shines - it is the only one that feels real throughout. Perhaps I’m looking for too much: can a play this bombastic still hold onto reality? Should it even want to? All I know is that despite the thrill of this production, it ultimately feels like a game, an experiment of sorts. One can picture Orton as chief puppeteer, delighting in the misery of his characters and disgust of his audience. It is a fun game to play, but I want to see what happens when the playing stops and reality sets in.

Till 11 April 2009