JOE ORTON

Biography

 In the literary world the "Ortonesque" refers to that which is both macabre and outrageous. This term not only defines the works of Joe Orton, but it acts as a description for both the life and death of this British playwright. He was born John Kingsley Orton on January 1, 1933 to a working class couple in Leicester, England. He

spent the first eighteen years of his short life in Leicester where he attended secretarial school, acted in plays, and lost several odd jobs. In 1950, Orton moved to London to attend the Royal Academy of Art. It was during these three years, that he met Kenneth Halliwell a man seven years his senior.

Halliwell and Orton became partners and moved into a small flat. Halliwell, who was living off an inheritance at the time, took Orton under his wing. He taught Orton Greek drama, and the English literary classics. The couple began writing novels together, but none of them were ever accepted for publication. In 1957, Orton's independent talent began to emerge and he started submitting his own work. But in 1962, before success hit, Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell spent six months in prison for stealing and defacing library books at an Islington library.
     
 Not long after his release from prison, Orton's radio play Ruffian on the Stair was accepted by the BBC. A year later, in 1964, the radio play was aired, when Orton was already basking in the success of the production of his Entertaining Mr. Sloane at the New Arts Theatre.
      
In 1966, Orton's third play Loot was performed, which brought Orton even more recognition. The release of three other plays quickly followed, The Good and Faithful Servant (1964), The Erpingham Camp (1967), and Funeral Games (1966). In the midst of his fame, Orton also wrote a screenplay for the Beatles called Up Against It, but it was rejected.
     
Halliwell who was once Orton's literary guide had difficulties dealing with Orton's success. Failing at his own attempts at art, Halliwell became insecure and bitter about their relationship. On August 9, 1967 Halliwell acted upon these emotions, beating Orton to death with a hammer and then taking his own life.
    
 After only four years in the limelight, Orton's life was cut short. Today Orton's works continue to be examined and performed. While his work is sometimes criticized for being trivial, Orton is often regarded as the great farceur of his time. His early works, two novels of which he wrote with Halliwell, were published recently after the manuscripts were released by his sister Leonie Orton-Bartnett.

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Major Works: Plays, Novels and Special Collections

Note: I have listed the dates of book publications here, rather than when the manuscripts were written, to help you locate copies of these works. Please see the Biography section for the actual years Orton completed these works.Plays

• Entertaining Mr. Sloane: A Comedy (London: H. Hamilton, 1964)
• Loot (London: Methuen Drama, 1967)
• Crimes of Passion: The Ruffian on the Stair, The Erpingham Camp (London: Methuen, 1967)
• What the Butler Saw (London, Methuen, 1969)
• Funeral Games; and, The Good and Faithful Servant (London, Methuen, 1970)
• Joe Orton: The Complete Plays (New York: Grove Press, 1977)
• Up Against It: A Screenplay for the Beatles (New York: Grove Press, 1979))
• The Visitors; Fred and Madge: Two Plays (New York: Grove Press, 1998)
Novels
• Head to Toe (London: Methuen, 1971)
• Between Us Girls: a novel (New York: Grove Press, 1999)
• Lord Cucumber; and, The Boy Hairdresser: two novels by Joe Orton & Kenneth Halliwell (London: Menthuen, 1999)Other Works
• "Until She Screams," in Oh! Calcutta!; edited by Kenneth Tynan (New York: Grove Press, 1969)
• The Orton Diaries: Including the Correspondence of Edna Welthorpe and others; edited by John Lahr
(New York: Harper & Row, 1986)
Special Collection
• Personal and Literary Papers, Photographs and Memorabilia of "Joe Orton" (1933-67) Playwright. (Other Title: The Orton Collection)   Catalogued by J.G. Clark. Held at the University of Leicester Library, England. Purchased from the Orton Estate, 1997.
 

(This is a selected bibliography of the works and criticism of the British playwright Joe Orton. It was compiled in July 2001 by Beth Burke, a graduate student of Simmons College GSLIS).
 

For more information see http://www.le.ac.uk/li/sources/subject1/specol/details.html#orton .

"Joe Orton's last play, What the Butler Saw, will live to be accepted as a comedy classic of English literature" (Sunday Telegraph)

The chase is on in this breakneck comedy of licensed insanity, from the moment when Dr Prentice, a psychoanalyst interviewing a prospective secretary, instructs her to undress. The plot of What the Butler Saw contains enough twists and turns, mishaps and changes of fortune, coincidences and lunatic logic to furnish three or four conventional comedies. But however the six characters in search of a plot lose the thread of the action - their wits or their clothes - their verbal self-possession never deserts them. Hailed as a modern comedy every bit as good as Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Orton's play is regularly produced, read and studied. What the Butler Saw was Orton's final play.

"He is the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility" (Observer)

WHAT THE BUTLER SAW

What the Butler Saw was Joe Orton's last play.  He never saw it performed before he bacame the mortal victim of his lover Kenneth Halliwell's bloody assault.
Dying young, in 1967, aged 34, Orton's output is comparatively meagre.  In addition to What the Butler Saw there are two other full-length stage plays: Entertaining Mr Sloan and Loot.  All three must be considered comic masterpieces.  He also wrote The Good and Faithfull Servant and Erpington Camp for TV, and the one-act The Ruffian on the Stair.

Orton was an hedonistic, anarchic homosexual with a priceless sense of humour, albeit black with a wit mordant.  He was fascinated by the ubiquitous cliché, "in the worst possible taste", finding the very notion of taste risible; and he set out to demolish any such pretension.  Death, sex, and corrupt policemen were in his childhood the great unmentionables and breaking these taboos was his especial delight.  But writing rude words on a wall mighht have been the sum of Orton's iconoclasm had it not been for Halliwell.

Orton's education was in three contrasting stages.  First came the kind of basic education provided for the children of the Leicester council estate whence Orton came.  Next came R.A.D.A. to which, amazingly, Joe won a scholarship but which he came later to describe as a complete waste of time.  Thirdly and crucially at the hands of his lover and mentor (and finally, murderer) Kenneth Halliwell.

Halliwell could fairly be described as a well-educated misfit, a failure in the eyes of the world and himself.  But it was undoubtedly he who fed, inspired and transformed Orton from a failed working-class actor into a hugely successful playwright.  Halliwell's influence notwithstanding, Orton's style is unique, inimitable: a kind of dumb insolence out-loud, elegantly incisive, bordering, at times, on the poetic.  There is no bad language in an Orton script; no mother-in-law jokes, or harridan wives, or sex-starved spinsters.  There are laughs a-plenty but no cheap laughs.

Considered technically, as a farce, What the Butler Saw is a masterpiece; evidently Orton had made a serious study of the genre and was intent on producing just that.  It is also fiendishly difficult to produce with, for example, no less than 149 separate entrances and exits for the actors, plus a great deal of manic stage business and a difficult to design set.  The plot is operatic in its complexity with, methinks, an occasional genuflection to The Marriage of Figaro.

To claim to have done full justice to Orton's comic genius we cannot.  But we've given it our best shot.  Hope you enjoy it.

Director's Notes by B.B., July 2002
Priestley Centre for the Arts, Chapel Street, Little Germany, Bradford, BD1 5DL