SOURCE: Loney, Glenn. “Entertaining Mr. Loney: An Early Interview with Joe Orton.” New Theatre Quarterly 4 (November 1988): 300-05.

In the following essay, a report of a 1965 interview, Loney and the playwright talk about Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Orton's interest in the works of Jane Austen, the genre of black comedy, Orton's brief history in the theater, and other subjects.

Every summer, drama teachers desert American college campuses in search of meaningful change or new experiences. Some paint their houses. Others fly off to London to see Broadway's newest hits before they arrive in New York. This has been going on for a long time now. In July 1964, as I was frantically making up my list of what to see in the West End and at Stratford, trying to cram in as many plays as possible, I found a curious photo in a Sunday arts section. It showed a pert young...