How can parents make sense of their children's disabilities? That's the question posed by Peter Nichols' outrageously funny A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (The OSO Arts Centre, 13th 18th June). At one point, Ed, young father of the severely disabled Josephine, blames God, "a manic depressive rugby footballer". But in Ross Livingstone's impressive new production it's the parents and the play itself that seem manic depressive.

Andrew Beynon's Ed lives his life as a series of performances he's joky, callous, perverse, maudlin, childish, randy and finally just exhausted. Claudine Franks' Sheila seems more level-headed. But she's struggling too, with an instinct that their predicament must be a punishment.

The instability of the characters' moods is mirrored by the play's form: Ed says that talking to their daughter is like talking to the wall, and then both parents turn to the fourth wall and become aware of the audience. From then on, the drama switches jarringly between genres between kitchen sink and stand-up comedy, between self-justifying monologues and domestic farce.

The cast are excellent. Beynon's haggard and charismatic Ed is wonderfully unpredictable, while Franks gives a superb performance as the increasingly desperate Sheila. Richard Keynes is great value as the hideously self-satisfied Freddie ("I tend to raise my voice when I'm helping people"), and Annie Rowe plays his wife Pam as a kind of Nazi Prunella Scales (you can hear the audience gasp when she advocates euthanasia for the disabled: "If I say gas chamber it sounds horrid").

Anne Rutter's Grace is monstrous but strangely likeable. Indeed all the characters are sympathetic; they're all scrabbling around for solutions to an insoluble problem. And C.B. Springer deserves enormous credit for her performance as that "problem" an immobile ten year-old girl in a wheelchair.

Director Ross Livingstone embraces the script's shift in gears and creates a wonderfully unsettling atmosphere. This is an excellent production of an extraordinary play.

Nick Harrop wrote: Dear Helen Taylor, I am pleased to be submitting a review for the production of Entertaining Mr Sloane that was on at the Old Sorting Office in Barnes last week (6 - 11 February 2006). I'd be very grateful if you could acknowledge receipt of this email, and let me know whether you'll be able to publish the review. It's just under 300 words.

Many thanks and best wishes, Nick Harrop 42 years after its original production, Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane retains its ability to shock. Each character operates according to a twisted, selfish logic that they themselves appear not to understand. Boundaries become confused between power and sex; between right and wrong; between high farce and outrageous reality.

Ross Livingstone's new production at the Old Sorting Office (6th 11th February 2006) skilfully highlights the play's comedy without sacrificing any of its bleak implications. If Orton's characters a randy landlady, a cocky chancer, a senile old man and a self-assured criminal initially seem like stage stereotypes, Livingstone humanises them by giving breathing-space to their vulnerabilities.

The first Act is full of hilarious moments, as first Tania Wade's Kath and then her Andrew Beynon's Ed make advances towards their new tenant Mr Sloane (Adam Kelly).

Wade is superb as Kath, by turns monstrously flirtatious and heart-breakingly unsure of herself. Beynon also gives an impressively complex performance his Ed seems casually callous, but also strangely out of his depth, not as in control of the situation as he'd like to be. Alan Forrest is also excellent as their baffled father.

But it is in Acts 2 and 3 that this production gains its sinister momentum. Adam Kelly's Mr Sloane, who finally reveals his dark secret, is a walking contradiction skinny but thuggish, child-like but psychotic. Kelly varies his voice and his posture with great skill; as Sloane shrieks and cowers, flirts and threatens, Kelly's performance is often mesmerising.

This is another fine production at the Old Sorting Office. The set is excellent, with the grim yellow walls and the smiling gnome on the mantelpiece adding to the sense of sinister decay. The cast and crew deserve a great deal of credit for this deliciously uneasy revival of a classic play.

Nick Harrop