"London Classic Theatre is now a major player on the middle-scale touring circuit if its last production of Molly Sweeney and this one are anything to go by. This is a very fine staging indeed of Joe Orton’s first play. It manages to put the shock and danger back into something that all too often seems to be a mildly amusing black comedy.

Michael Cabot’s firm, clear direction brings out hitherto unseen parallels with Pinter and Beckett, somehow peeling the years away to make the audience feel they are seeing a 1964 play as a new drama.

Only Jens Demant Cole’s wittily stylised set keeps an ironic distance, littered with period kitsch and producing its own wickedly Ortonesque joke just before the interval.

Pauline Whitaker’s Kath at first seems to young and well-dressed but that is part of the subtlety of her lovely performance. Very soon this middle-aged child who will never grow up is playing with Sloane like a doll - and very sexily too.

Benjamin Warren’s Sloane is shallow, selfish and dangerous but also vulnerable. Kemp, played by Peter Cadden, is a masterpiece of grubbiness, an immensely strong reading of a weak character. Nicholas Gasson’s Ed inhabits a world of meetings, cars and feelings he cannot quite admit to.

Thanks to the cast’s perfectly pitched phrasing and timing, the voice of Orton sounds loud and clear in this excellent, very black and very funny production, now embarking on an extensive tour of Britain and Ireland."