THIS play from a writer slain by his homosexual lover in 1967 created something of a stir when it had its premiere in London three years earlier. Joe Orton, who also wrote Loot and What the Butler Saw, shocked people in the allegedly swinging sixties with this wickedly funny and unsettling account of the aspirations and imperfections of bizarre, amoral people seeking respectability and social/emotional acceptance via sex, murder and suchlike. More than 30 years later it is still a memorable piece of theatre, even if it does not seem particularly daring any more.

Society has moved on to the point where the Octagon is happy to promote this production - part of its 30 year anniversary season - in association with Manchester's Queer Up North international arts festival.

Maybe this was why some of the chaps in the audience guffawed loudly at lines of dialogue which did not seem universally hilarious.

Kath, played beautifully by Anna Keaveney, lives with her decrepit father (Peter Stockbridge) and sinister, manipulative brother Ed (Michael Roberts) in a house built in the middle of a rubbish dump.

The symbolism is driven home through Richard Beecham's effective direction and designer Ashley Shairp's imaginative use of soil, old pram wheels and other scrap.

Dark, emotional soup is stirred when 20-year-old Mr Sloane, played with verve by Ben Price, comes to stay and raises the sexual tensions in a shameful and ambivalent fashion. Alan Calvert

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.