Because We're Queers: The Life and Crimes of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton

by Simon Shepherd

Like many past figures of gay culture, Joe Orton's fate was to be used by the straight world for its own purposes. He has come to symbolise the 'swinging London' of the mid-Sixties, with his subversive and distinctly gay message conveniently blunted. Kenneth Halliwell, who with his lover helped to create the Ortonesque, was cast as villain by the theatrical establishment long before the tragedy that ended both their lives. In this pioneering study, Simon Shepherd reclaims Orton and Halliwell for the gay movement, setting both their achievements and their limitations against the repressive backdrop of homophobia and hypocrisy that is still so characteristic of England today.

167 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1989

About the author

Simon Shepherd, MA, MLitt, PhD, FBA is Fellow of the British Academy and Professor Emeritus of Theatre at The Central School of Speech and Drama, London, UK. He has written on performance, theatre and culture.

Reviews

[JOSEPH OLIVER · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is rather an academic approach to Orton's work. It is not a biography in the way Lahr's book is but rather a critique of the social and political situation at the time Orton was both maturing and writing. It analyses many of the situations Orton had to navigate to become a successful playwright i.e. having to defer to and socialise with classes of closeted homosexuals in the theatre world responsible for staging his works. He hated them as a group and could never identify with them. Nor could he identify with the middle classes to which they belonged and which formed them. He created his works as a solitary homosexual writer (with an unquantifiable contribution from Halliwell). He was not establishment but needed it to get his work on stage.

The book is slightly dated now and would probably be written in a different style were it published today as the writer betrays his 70's sociological education. His views on marriage however are still pertinent and he shows Orton and Halliwell in a rather modern light in rejecting any `marriage' as merely trying to copy a social institution used to keep a Capitalist economy in power. In saying that it is still an excellent academic read and should be read after Lahr's biography and not before. Both works are needed to get some balanced picture of Orton and his legacy.