This volume contains every play written by Joe Orton, who emerged in the 1960s as the most talented comic playwright in recent English history. Orton, who was murdered in 1967 at the age of thirty-four, was considered the direct successor to Wilde, Shaw, and Coward. Includes: The Ruffian on the Stair Entertaining Mr. Sloane The Good and Faithful Servant Loot The Erpingham Camp Funeral Games What the Butler Saw
Published fifty years after the premiere of Entertaining Mr Sloane in 1964, and with a new introduction, this anniversary edition offers an opportunity to reappraise Joe Orton's reputation, and the status of his first major play, from a twenty-first century perspective. When it first appeared in the Swinging Sixties, Orton's satire on social and sexual hypocrisy both scandalized and delighted audiences. Its mix of sexuality and violence was explosive. Within a year, the play was being performed around the world and went on to be adapted for film and television, establishing Orton as a major voice and this play as one of the most ground-breaking of the century. This anniversary edition features previously unpublished material from the Joe Orton Archive, an interview with director Nick Bagnall, and an introduction by Emma Parker, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Leicester.
A black farce masterpiece, Loot follows the fortunes of two young thieves, Hal and Dennis. Dennis is a hearse driver for an undertaker. They have robbed the bank next door to the funeral parlour and have returned to Hal's home to hide-out with the loot. Hal's mother has just died and the pair put the money in her coffin, hiding the body elsewhere in the house. With the arrival of Inspector Truscott, the thickened plot turns topsy-turvy. Playing with all the conventions of popular farce, Orton creates a world gone mad and examines in detail English attitudes at mid-century. The play has been called a Freudian nightmare, which sports with superstitions about death - and life. It is regularly produced in professional and amateur productions. First produced in London in 1966, Loot was hailed as "the most genuinely quick-witted, pungent and sprightly entertainment by a new, young British playwright for a decade" (Sunday Telegraph). The Student Edition offers a plot summary, full commentary, character notes and questions for study, besides a chronology and bibliography.
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)
I suppose I'm a believer in Original Sin. People are profoundly bad but irresistibly funny' Joe Orton. This volume contains everything that Orton wrote for the theatre, radio and television from his first play in 1964, The Ruffian on the Stair, up to his violent death in 1967 at the age of 34. It includes his major successes: Entertaining Mr Sloane, which 'made more blood boil that any other British play in the last ten years' (The Times); Loot, 'a Freudian nightmare', which sports with superstitions about death - as well as life; his farce masterpiece, What the Butler Saw; The Erpingham Camp, his version of The Bacchae, set in a Butlin's holiday resort; together with his television plays, Funeral Games and The Good and Faithful Servant. The volume includes a revealing introduction by John Lahr, Orton's official biographer."He is the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility" (Observer)
I suppose I'm a believer in Original Sin. People are profoundly bad but irresistibly funny' Joe Orton. This volume contains everything that Orton wrote for the theatre, radio and television from his first play in 1964, The Ruffian on the Stair, up to his violent death in 1967 at the age of 34. It includes his major successes: Entertaining Mr Sloane, which 'made more blood boil that any other British play in the last ten years' (The Times); Loot, 'a Freudian nightmare', which sports with superstitions about death - as well as life; his farce masterpiece, What the Butler Saw; The Erpingham Camp, his version of The Bacchae, set in a Butlin's holiday resort; together with his television plays, Funeral Games and The Good and Faithful Servant. The volume includes a revealing introduction by John Lahr, Orton's official biographer. "He is the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility" (Observer)
In "Fred and Madge," a married couple has the unending jobs of rolling boulders uphill and sieving water all day long; and in "The Visitors," a dying man is visited in the hospital by his middle-aged daughter.
The fictional diary of young would-be actress Susan Hope, whose adventures lead her from life on the London stage to servitude in the white slave trade of Mexico, and ultimately to film stardom in Hollywood.
Two novels which mark the beginning and the end of the famous writing partnership of Orton and Halliwell. Lord Cucumber is a camp pastiche of a Mills and Boon romance, set on a cruise ship in the isles of Greece. The Boy Hairdresser depicts the tortured relationship of two Angry Young Men.
The Boy Hairdresser and Lord Cucumber are the first and last surviving products of the collaborative efforts of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. They are published for the first time in this combined volume.
I suppose I'm a believer in Original Sin. People are profoundly bad but irresistibly funny' Joe Orton. This volume contains everything that Orton wrote for the theatre, radio and television from his first play in 1964, The Ruffian on the Stair, up to his violent death in 1967 at the age of 34. It includes his major successes: Entertaining Mr Sloane, which 'made more blood boil that any other British play in the last ten years' (The Times); Loot, 'a Freudian nightmare', which sports with superstitions about death - as well as life; his farce masterpiece, What the Butler Saw; The Erpingham Camp, his version of The Bacchae, set in a Butlin's holiday resort; together with his television plays, Funeral Games and The Good and Faithful Servant. The volume includes a revealing introduction by John Lahr, Orton's official biographer."He is the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility" (Observer)
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