SOURCE: Duplain, Julian. Review of Entertaining Mr. Sloane, by Joe Orton. Times Literary Supplement, no. 4692 (5 March 1993): 18.

In the following review, Duplain points to the well-structured plot and comic timing of Entertaining Mr. Sloane.

“Three repulsive folk well acted”: for once the tone of twee outrage about the state of British morals in the theatre was not being whipped up by Edna Welthorpe (Mrs.) or another of Joe Orton's epistolary aliases. Even as his stomach turned, a contemporary critic (for the Daily Telegraph) had acknowledged what a well-structured play Entertaining Mr. Sloane is. And it is the unwinding of a tight plot with mercenary logic that still gives an edge to the play (which was first performed in 1964), even if the comic shock of carnal scheming in suburbia has been dulled by almost three decades of television satire and social liberalization. Some lines, however, are so well written that...