By Joe Orton
BBC Radio 3Drama on 3
As director John Tydeman says in the informative introduction of this first radio production of the 1964 play, this is not an important play but an entertaining one. We also learn that Dudley Sutton played the 19 year old Sloane in that first production. Here he is Kemp, the family grandfather.
I saw a production of this in New York less than 10 years ago. It didn't make much of an impression on me then. I think I was in a cranky mood with my date in a relationship that was going bad. But today I quite enjoyed it for what it was as I listened at the gym on an mp3 player. Actually it was sort of the perfect way to hear it, while working out. There is a scene where Ed is asking Sloane about his workout habits.
In the early scenes Sloane is a sort of projection screen for the lustful desires of the other, older characters in the play. This to me was the most interesting part of the play. It starts to explore that blind and unseemly atmosphere of lust. The object becomes what they want him to be. They are not at all able to see what he really is. This sort of lust is not at all attractive, the vampire like need of the old to connect with youth as if somehow it will give them a new lease on life. He uses this, his attractiveness, their desire, to his own advantage as he plays all the bisexual angles within this odd family. One thinks that he might just win the game until the tables are turned on him and he proves to be so deeply amoral, actually criminal, that he entraps himself in the web they weave. He will be their plaything, their time-share slave.
As they stated in the introduction, it's not a great play. But it is beautifully paced, has some funny, witty dialogue and some fun turns of plot. Some of these plot twists would seem a bit melodramatic unless one considers what happened to poor Mr. Orton just three years after this piece was written. This is a fine and entertaining production.
It can be heard here: Drama on 3 through Saturday April 21, 2007
