Joe Orton : The Complete Plays
by Joe Orton
On This Page
Description
''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 show more 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)'' show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Absurdist plays with a definite 1960s feel. The language at times at the feel of Gertrude Stein, and other times Alan Ayckbourn, but never quite reaches the sublime levels that would imply. The nature of the sexual themes also place them squarely in the 60s, during the sexual revolution. There is charm and wit here, and if the playwright had lived longer, he might have honed it to a truly sharp edge. As it is, there is a lot to like.
Plays like Loot and Entertaining Mr. Sloan are great fun, but What the Butler Saw is a work of high genius, the equal of Wilde and Frayn (there are no greater names in the land of farce). Any collection that contains WTBS deserves a 5-star rating, par principe.
I've seen two of these plays performed live; "Loot" at Nottingham Theatre Royal, and "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" in a room above a pub in Nottingham, but I found the other plays in this book equally enjoyable.
The Ruffian on the Stair
Entertaining Mr. Sloan
The Good and Faithful Servant
Loot
The Erpingham Camp
Funeral Games
What The Butler Saw
Entertaining Mr. Sloan
The Good and Faithful Servant
Loot
The Erpingham Camp
Funeral Games
What The Butler Saw
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Lists
20th Century Literature
1,161 works; 55 members
Harold Bloom - The Western Canon: D. The Chaotic Age
833 works; 24 members
Author Information
30+ Works 2,168 Members
Born in Leicester, Orton trained as an actor but soon turned to writing plays instead. Before his career had barely begun, however, he was murdered by his homosexual lover, apparently in a fit of jealousy over his success. Orton's shocking murder is too easily made the biographical focus for discussion of his plays, devoted as they are to the show more grotesque, the perverse, and the violent. A more relevant landmark in the playwright's life might be the jail term he served for the bizarre crime of defacing library books, replacing illustrations with uproarious collages, and rewriting jacket blurbs in "mildly obscene" parodies of journalistic cliche. Assaulting the cultural consumer by transposing familiar icons and vocabulary was the key to Orton's theatrical method. But it was supplemented by a growing verbal power and stage imagery with aspirations to myth. As Orton's literary powers grew, so did the outrage of social response. The Pinterian ambiance and language of his first works, Entertaining Mr. Sloan (1964) and the radio play The Ruffian on the Stair (1966), were well received. Sloane was chosen best new British play of 1964 and won the blessing of Terence Rattigan himself. But Loot, joking with death, religion, sex, and family, proved more disturbing (it involves a slapstick charade centered on a corpse and a coffin). The first production, directed by Peter Wood, closed on tour without reaching London. It was not until 1966 that the play was staged, to acclaim, in Charles Marowitz's fringe theater. In 1969, What the Butler Saw failed in the West End, despite a cast of many famous names, including Ralph Richardson. Only the Royal Court revival of 1975 gave Orton's undoubted masterpiece its due. But by then the playwright had been dead for eight years. In the phallic epiphany with which Butler ends, as in his version of Euripides' Bacchae, The Erpingham Camp (1965), Orton calls attention to his Dionysian ambitions, his serious use of farce as a means of disruption and liberation. His last plays, in which violent animal spirits subvert dialogue of extreme, even Victorian, formality and outrageous authority figures, represent probably the greatest comic achievement of contemporary British drama. show less
All Editions
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Joe Orton : The Complete Plays
- Original publication date
- The Ruffian on the Stair (1964) (1964); Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964) (1964); The Good and Faithful Servant (1967) (1967); Loot (1965) (1965); The Erpingham Camp (1966) (1966); Funeral Games (1968) (1968) (show all 7); What the Butler Saw (1969) (1969)
- People/Characters
- Mr Sloane
- Original language
- English
- Disambiguation notice
- 0413346102 | 9780413346100 1976 Methuen World Classics
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 715
- Popularity
- 39,518
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (4.17)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 12
