Entertaining Mr Sloane **** TNT

Wednesday 25 February 2009 10:05 GMT

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Entertaining Mr Sloane

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Wednesday 25 February 2009 10:05 GMT.

Imelda Staunton gives a perfectly-judged performance combining ruthless determination with a childlike vulnerability in this precisely observed revival of Joe Orton’s scabrous black comedy. She plays rapacious middle-aged landlady Kath who hasn’t a single qualm about changing into the sheerest of sheer negligees to pounce on her much younger new lodger.

She’s not the only one with designs on the cocky young man with a secret, though. Her brother Ed (his pompous pretensions to moral rectitude betrayed by every twitch of his moustache in Simon Paisley Day’s equally effective portrayal) finds him just as irresistible, and it’s left to their myopic father (Richard Bremmer’s gangly old Kemp, as unsavoury as an elongated Steptoe) to fatally call his bluff.

Director Nick Bagnall keeps the piece very much in period (flying ducks adorn the tasteless peeling wallpaper) and - 45 years after its premiere - Orton’s innuendo-packed satire on lower middleclass behaviour guarantees a comedy of selfish cruelty in the company of a quartet of callous characters one really wouldn’t want to know outside the confines of the theatre.

Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, SW1 (0870 060 6632)to 11th April (£25-£45-)