Anfrage: Korrekturlesen 1 Din A4 Englisch Stufe 10

Entertaining Mr. Sloane from Joe Orton

Summary:
The play starts right away with Mr. Sloane, who is looking for accommodation from the middle-aged Kath obliges, but it is clear that her motive for taking Mr. Sloane on as a boarder is that she is attracted to him. There also is her father Kemp and her brother Ed, who all live in the same house. Kath assumes that Ed will not be pleased about Sloane staying, for fear of her forming a relationship with him, but on the contrary it is clear from the beginning that Ed also likes Sloane, and so he employs him as his driver. Kath got mother feelings to Sloane, because she had a son which should be in the same age as Mr. Sloane and the first Act ends while she is having sex with Mr. Sloane.
The second Act mainly tells about Kemp’s way of figure out that Mr. Sloane has murdered his boss some time ago. In the end of the second Act Kemp knew that it was Sloane, so he starts talking to him. Kemp wants to go to the police and Sloane murders him because he doesn’t see any way out of his situation.
In the third and last Act there are still the siblings Kath and Ed and they force him to choose between living with Kath who is pregnant by him, or the jealous Ed. In the end, Kath and Ed reach a compromise, agreeing to cover up Kemp's murder, and sharing Sloane, with each sharing him for six months at a time. Sloane adopts a passive role at this point in the play.

Interpretation & conjectures:
As example Mr. Sloane’s first name is unknown he has lived in an orphanage is as old as the son of Kath should be, which was also given to an orphanage. Maybe Kath’s Son and Mr. Sloane is one and the same person. The fate of the father of Kath’s Son whether they were married or not is unclear. Also Kath takes on a motherly role with Sloane, in addition to being his lover. Apart from that the play doesn’t tell what the job of Ed is. Maybe he is crime, too. His working time is different every day and he earns enough money to adjust a driver. By the way the relationship between Ed and Mr. Sloane is not defined, that is saying, that their “love” also can have a homosexual adjustment.

Play history:
Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a play and no roman like other books, it is a theatre play. And it is the third play of Joe Orton, which was written by him in the time of four months, from September to December 1963, but he didn’t work only on this play, synchronized he had another play in a theatre, which was popular enough to make the publishing of his new play easy. And that happened on the sixth May in 1964 in the New Arts Theatre in London. It is transferred to Wyndham’s Theatre and later to Queens Theatre in the same Year, because of its popularity.

Public reaction:
Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a nice mild comedy, which is full of sexual indirectness. One part of the people watched the play only for their entertainment, but the other part of people watched the play for becoming thoughtful. They thought about situations they ever saw from another side. They noticed that they aren’t able to support their opinion any more; they have got a new perspective.
Furthermore the world of a probably nicht hetero person was presented. Of course, that was sorely new.

Author Joe Orton:
Joe Orton was born into a Working class family on January 1th in the year 1933 to William and Elsie Kingsley Orton, Saffron Estates, Leicester, England. In 1944 he failed 11+ exams. After school in 1950 he got lessons to eliminate lisp and Lancastrian dialect, one year later he joined the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London. In London he also met his friend Kenneth Halliwell. They both were nicht hetero and Joe moved to his partner one month after they come to know each other. Together they wrote some unpublished plays. In 1962 they got into jail for 6 months for defacing library books. One Year later they sold their play, Ruffian on the Stair, to the BBC. In the same year from September to December he wrote Entertaining Mr. Sloane. In the rest of his life he also wrote Loot, What the Butler Saw his Diaries and a screenplay for the Beatles; Up Against It. But it wasn’t realized. During the night of August 9, 1967, Halliwell, his nicht hetero partner bludgeoned the 34-year-old Orton to death with nine hammer blows to the head, and then committed suicide with an overdose of 22 Nembutal tablets washed down with the juice from a tin of grapefruit. Investigators determined that it was Halliwell who died first because Orton's body was still warm. Their ashes were mixed and scattered together over Golders Green.
Joe Orton lived in the democracy of England after the Second World War. In the 60th England start to build modernized infra structure like motorways. He grew up and he went to school in wartime and he was born by a working class family, so he had not the easiest childhood. As the oldest of 4 siblings he noticed the fate of the war and the families which fathers didn’t come home. Also tuberculosis cost his mother a lung. Joe Orton was counted among the modern dramatic authors.