EVENTS AND PERFORMANCES

Entertaining Mr Sloane - 50th Anniversary Celebration!
RECORDINGS NOW ONLINE

In summer 2014. Leicester University, which holds the Joe Orton Archive, hosted a day of screenings, talks and readings to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his first play, Entertaining Mr Sloane.

In its day, Orton’s satire on social and sexual hypocrisy ignited controversy. Sloane was the Summer sensation of 1964 and was described by the London Evening News as ‘a real shocker’. However, it went on to win the London Critics’ Play of the Year award. Fellow writer Terrence Rattigan declared Sloane ‘the most exciting and stimulating first play’ that he had seen in ‘thirty (odd) years’ and Tennessee Williams hailed it as the funniest play he had ever seen.

Recordings of speakers at the event are now available via the University's Sound Cloud account. (No membership is required to play these files, just Flash Player.)

Links to the recordings are below.

Memories of Joe Orton – Leonie Orton Barnett

Joe Orton’s Influence on Contemporary Writers – Jake Arnott

Entertaining Mr Sloane–The Key Debates–Professor Simon Shepherd & Dr Francesca Coppa

‘Edna Welthorpe’ and Other Letters – Leonie Orton Barnett

Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane: A 50th Anniversary Celebration complete playlist

Also, three NEW films - made by novelist Jake Arnott, director Nick Bagnall and actor Kenneth Cranham - are now available on YouTube:

Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane 50th Anniversary - Kenneth Cranham

Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane 50th Anniversary – Jake Arnott

Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane 50th Anniversary – Nick Bagnall