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Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton
This mesmerizing story of playwright and author Joe Orton’s brief and remarkable life was named book of the year by Truman Capote and Nobel Prize–winning novelist Patrick White
Told with precision and extensive detail, Prick Up Your Ears is the engrossing biography of playwright and novelist Joe Orton. Orton’s public career spanned only three years (1964–1967), but his work made a lasting mark on the international stage. From Entertaining Mr. Sloane to his career-making Loot, Orton’s plays often shocked, sometimes outraged, and always captivated audiences with their dark yet farcical cynicism. A rising star and undeniable talent, Orton left much undone when he was bludgeoned to death by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, who had educated Orton and also dreamed of becoming a famous writer.
Prick Up Your Ears was the basis for the distinguished 1987 film of the same name, directed by Stephen Frears, with a screenplay by Alan Bennett, and starring Gary Oldman and Vanessa Redgrave. A brilliant, page-turning examination of the dueling forces behind Orton’s work, Prick Up Your Ears secured the playwright’s reputation as a great twentieth-century artist.
Told with precision and extensive detail, Prick Up Your Ears is the engrossing biography of playwright and novelist Joe Orton. Orton’s public career spanned only three years (1964–1967), but his work made a lasting mark on the international stage. From Entertaining Mr. Sloane to his career-making Loot, Orton’s plays often shocked, sometimes outraged, and always captivated audiences with their dark yet farcical cynicism. A rising star and undeniable talent, Orton left much undone when he was bludgeoned to death by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, who had educated Orton and also dreamed of becoming a famous writer.
Prick Up Your Ears was the basis for the distinguished 1987 film of the same name, directed by Stephen Frears, with a screenplay by Alan Bennett, and starring Gary Oldman and Vanessa Redgrave. A brilliant, page-turning examination of the dueling forces behind Orton’s work, Prick Up Your Ears secured the playwright’s reputation as a great twentieth-century artist.
365 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 1978
36 people are currently reading
672 people want to read
About the author
John Lahr
65 books37 followersJohn Lahr is the senior drama critic of The New Yorker, where he has written about theatre and popular culture since 1992. Among his eighteen books are Notes on a Cowardly Lion: The Biography of Bert Lahr and Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton, which was made into a film.
He has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Lahr, whose stage adaptations have been performed around the world, received a Tony Award for co-writing Elaine Stritch at Liberty.
He divides his time between London and New York.
He has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Lahr, whose stage adaptations have been performed around the world, received a Tony Award for co-writing Elaine Stritch at Liberty.
He divides his time between London and New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
December 26, 2019
Read it long ago, but it's stuck in my memory as such a good read. John Lahr knows his stuff & brought Joe Orton and his dark shade of humour to life brilliantly.
July 3, 2011
John Lahr has the first and last word on Joe Orton, and it doesn't feel right. I've read his foreword to Orton's diary, his foreword to Orton's collected works and this, his Orton biography. I'm thinking:
1) Lahr's narrative is so powerful that when Lahr interviews people for a BBC documentary (youtube), they tell the same anecdotes back at him as he set them down in the biography. I'm suspicious. Doesn't anyone have a different take? Lahr seems to avoid a "this is my assessment of Joe Orton" approach and goes for "This Is Joe Orton. Nailed." And there are elements that must be controversial: we do not know that Joe planned to leave Kenneth.
2) I think that Lahr finds it really hard to forget that Kenneth kills Joe at the end. He has something of the approach of a Whig historian; everything in Joe's life signposts to the murder at the end. Really? Is this how our lives work?
3) This is a literary biography; Lahr is looking for Orton in his plays. But Orton isn't Shakespeare; he wrote three full length plays and, crucially, many of the people Orton met are still alive. It would be possible to talk to them. I felt that I wanted more of this. What was Orton like in prison? Surely there are records of the prisoners and prison officers he would have known. Did they have anything interesting to say?
1) Lahr's narrative is so powerful that when Lahr interviews people for a BBC documentary (youtube), they tell the same anecdotes back at him as he set them down in the biography. I'm suspicious. Doesn't anyone have a different take? Lahr seems to avoid a "this is my assessment of Joe Orton" approach and goes for "This Is Joe Orton. Nailed." And there are elements that must be controversial: we do not know that Joe planned to leave Kenneth.
2) I think that Lahr finds it really hard to forget that Kenneth kills Joe at the end. He has something of the approach of a Whig historian; everything in Joe's life signposts to the murder at the end. Really? Is this how our lives work?
3) This is a literary biography; Lahr is looking for Orton in his plays. But Orton isn't Shakespeare; he wrote three full length plays and, crucially, many of the people Orton met are still alive. It would be possible to talk to them. I felt that I wanted more of this. What was Orton like in prison? Surely there are records of the prisoners and prison officers he would have known. Did they have anything interesting to say?
January 2, 2021
An always interesting but not overly enlightening biography of the famous English playwright Joe Orton who achieved fame for his cheeky send-ups of the establishment, only to be murdered in his prime (at age 34) by his long time companion Kenneth Halliwell in 1967.
Died far too young. Probably would have been one of the great playwrights or maybe possibly more famous in death than in life. Who knows? Even after all these years Orton is still a source of fascination and subject of much chatter amongst his admirers.
Were his plays just a flash in the pan that hit at the right time in the swinging London of the 1960s?
Why did he remain in the tiny bedsit with the unstable Halliwell? Despite his sudden success, he seemed unable to break the chains that shackled him to his mentor. There were signs that the break was coming but sadly it didn't happen soon enough.
They say opposites attract but in this case of the extroverted Joe and the introvert Ken, it ended up to be a fatal attraction. But one also wonders: without Halliwell would there have been a Joe Orton?
Funny stories about their regular trips to Tangier to "pick up" boys - at least for Joe as Ken was too concerned about his appearance especially his baldness to engage, and their friend the comedy actor Kenneth Williams who was too chaste to enjoy the scenery. This sexual promiscuity especially with Joe's penchant for "cottaging" plus his overnight fame no doubt left Halliwell seething with resentment at his protege's remarkable success and being referred by Joe's new theatre pals in dismissive and quizzical terms as " ... that's Joe's friend" may well have been the final straw in Ken's act of murder-suicide.
Died far too young. Probably would have been one of the great playwrights or maybe possibly more famous in death than in life. Who knows? Even after all these years Orton is still a source of fascination and subject of much chatter amongst his admirers.
Were his plays just a flash in the pan that hit at the right time in the swinging London of the 1960s?
Why did he remain in the tiny bedsit with the unstable Halliwell? Despite his sudden success, he seemed unable to break the chains that shackled him to his mentor. There were signs that the break was coming but sadly it didn't happen soon enough.
They say opposites attract but in this case of the extroverted Joe and the introvert Ken, it ended up to be a fatal attraction. But one also wonders: without Halliwell would there have been a Joe Orton?
Funny stories about their regular trips to Tangier to "pick up" boys - at least for Joe as Ken was too concerned about his appearance especially his baldness to engage, and their friend the comedy actor Kenneth Williams who was too chaste to enjoy the scenery. This sexual promiscuity especially with Joe's penchant for "cottaging" plus his overnight fame no doubt left Halliwell seething with resentment at his protege's remarkable success and being referred by Joe's new theatre pals in dismissive and quizzical terms as " ... that's Joe's friend" may well have been the final straw in Ken's act of murder-suicide.
January 16, 2015
A heterosexist, lazy biography of Orton overly reliant upon Lahr’s pop-psychology reading of Orton’s plays as texts for his life and shockingly dull to boot. Admittedly, Orton was young and his career as a successful playwright in its infancy at the time of his death, so Lahr had to look elsewhere to fill out his book. Outside of a few interviews, his work for the book seems to have solely consisted of access to Orton’s diaries and correspondence, coupled with his literary and psychology readings of Orton's plays. Tis a true pity he didn’t offer more detailed history of 1950s/60s London town and theater scene, placing Orton within a historical and real context. Overlaying the whole shallow affair is a gauze of pity and contempt, for Lahr cannot contain his puritanical, middle-class judgment at Orton’s love of rough trade and promiscuous sex. Lahr's flaws as a biographer and researcher would perhaps be forgiven, however, if the writing itself wasn't so plodding and tedious. Orton would be appalled.
January 16, 2015
Having just finished this book, I feel it’s a shame there’s only one memoir on Orton and that it was written by Lahr. With limited material there isn’t likely to be another. You really only get one chance with these things and while the book is very well researched, I get the sense that every available material and interview on Orton was utilized, I don’t know that Lahr was right for the job.
The book starts with Orton and Halliwell’s death and then kind of starts at the beginning with all things pointing to the inevitable end. Many times the book will reference the death and the signs that pointed to it, as if a 4 am bludgeoning could be predicted. In addition I felt there was no real understanding of Orton’s relationship with Halliwell. Other reviewers have called this heterosexist, and I don’t know that I’d go that far but I get what they mean. They shared a house and a bed and had sex for like ten years and the author refers to the as ‘friends’? I found it a little insulting. Similarly Orton’s diversions into public sex are written off and truncated, and I don’t know that that did the book any favours.
At one point on Orton’s sex life the author says:
"Promiscuity was a submersion in chaos, a flirtation with death, a ritual wasting with its 'magical' corollary of renewed fertility."
While having almost no idea what this sentence means, it’s definitely the case of over-thinking a quickie.
The author seems to have a point to make, with Orton’s sad life and sad ending, and he will even contradict himself to get there. Early on he says of Orton’s father:
“Orton would often bike out to his greenhouse and light the heaters. There, he had his tea and his flowers and his quiet.”
And later:
"William wanted only one thing in life: a greenhouse. He never got it."
The main flaw of the book I felt was no attempt at understanding Halliwell or their relationship. There is no clue given why Orton stayed with this man for years and years. Halliwell is portrayed from the beginning as unpleasant, unstable and pompous. And Lahr calling Haliwell pompous after writing the following lines is a bit of a joke as well:
"Pornography was the artless side of comedy's infantile fantasies."
"The trickster's emblem is the erect penis. Clowns, who embody the trickster's capricious and potent life force in their stage antics, often carried a vestigial phallus. The Elizabethan fool held a 'bauble' or 'plaything'. In contemporary comedy, the phallic anarchy is symbolized in Chaplin's cane, Harpo's horn, Groucho's cigar, Mr Hulot's umbrella."
“Despite its ferocious façade, revenge is an act of nostalgia: an attempt to force life back to an imagined earlier harmony.”
The book just over-analyzes too much. There’s a thorough review of each of Orton’s main plays, which is welcome, but to then bring all this wordage and meaning into it in an analysis is overdone. Calling Orton’s language “staged as a convincing self-hypnotic gesture of triumphant control in a life that denies it” is just ridiculous.
Fortunately about half the book is in Orton’s own voice and that serves the book well. The author at his best provides a guided tour of Orton’s life and has collected interviews, diaries and play segments together in a way that hasn’t been done before.
On occasion I laughed out loud at Orton’s writing and more of his spirit should have gone into this book.
“RANCE: Who was the first man in your life?
GERALDINE: My father.
RANCE: Did he assault you?
GERALDINE: No!
RANCE: (to DR PRENTICE) She may mean ‘Yes’ when she says ‘No’. It’s elementary feminine psychology…”
The book starts with Orton and Halliwell’s death and then kind of starts at the beginning with all things pointing to the inevitable end. Many times the book will reference the death and the signs that pointed to it, as if a 4 am bludgeoning could be predicted. In addition I felt there was no real understanding of Orton’s relationship with Halliwell. Other reviewers have called this heterosexist, and I don’t know that I’d go that far but I get what they mean. They shared a house and a bed and had sex for like ten years and the author refers to the as ‘friends’? I found it a little insulting. Similarly Orton’s diversions into public sex are written off and truncated, and I don’t know that that did the book any favours.
At one point on Orton’s sex life the author says:
"Promiscuity was a submersion in chaos, a flirtation with death, a ritual wasting with its 'magical' corollary of renewed fertility."
While having almost no idea what this sentence means, it’s definitely the case of over-thinking a quickie.
The author seems to have a point to make, with Orton’s sad life and sad ending, and he will even contradict himself to get there. Early on he says of Orton’s father:
“Orton would often bike out to his greenhouse and light the heaters. There, he had his tea and his flowers and his quiet.”
And later:
"William wanted only one thing in life: a greenhouse. He never got it."
The main flaw of the book I felt was no attempt at understanding Halliwell or their relationship. There is no clue given why Orton stayed with this man for years and years. Halliwell is portrayed from the beginning as unpleasant, unstable and pompous. And Lahr calling Haliwell pompous after writing the following lines is a bit of a joke as well:
"Pornography was the artless side of comedy's infantile fantasies."
"The trickster's emblem is the erect penis. Clowns, who embody the trickster's capricious and potent life force in their stage antics, often carried a vestigial phallus. The Elizabethan fool held a 'bauble' or 'plaything'. In contemporary comedy, the phallic anarchy is symbolized in Chaplin's cane, Harpo's horn, Groucho's cigar, Mr Hulot's umbrella."
“Despite its ferocious façade, revenge is an act of nostalgia: an attempt to force life back to an imagined earlier harmony.”
The book just over-analyzes too much. There’s a thorough review of each of Orton’s main plays, which is welcome, but to then bring all this wordage and meaning into it in an analysis is overdone. Calling Orton’s language “staged as a convincing self-hypnotic gesture of triumphant control in a life that denies it” is just ridiculous.
Fortunately about half the book is in Orton’s own voice and that serves the book well. The author at his best provides a guided tour of Orton’s life and has collected interviews, diaries and play segments together in a way that hasn’t been done before.
On occasion I laughed out loud at Orton’s writing and more of his spirit should have gone into this book.
“RANCE: Who was the first man in your life?
GERALDINE: My father.
RANCE: Did he assault you?
GERALDINE: No!
RANCE: (to DR PRENTICE) She may mean ‘Yes’ when she says ‘No’. It’s elementary feminine psychology…”
December 5, 2009
Joe Orton was an original, no getting around it. His plays, especially "Entertaining Mr. Sloan," "Loot" and "What the Butler Saw" are considered classics of the blackest form of comedy. He enjoyed shocking people, while always maintaining that his characters and the situations he places them in were grounded in reality.
This is a theatrical bio as bold and brash as its subject. Lahr has done a thorough job of exposing this most controversial of playwrights. Joe was a sexual compulsive, an in-your-face homosexual who enjoyed sex with strangers in public places. He also loved to brag about his exploits, never skimping on a detail.
Just when "things" were finally coming together for Orton professionally, things were beginning to unravel for his companion Kenneth Halliwell, who brutally murdered Orton in August 1967. Some would say his rude death befit how he lived the rest of his life. I think that would be judging Joe too harshly. Perhaps he would have been a flash-in-the-pan or as lasting and popular as Stoppard. We'll never know. That's the tragedy. Good job Lahr.
This is a theatrical bio as bold and brash as its subject. Lahr has done a thorough job of exposing this most controversial of playwrights. Joe was a sexual compulsive, an in-your-face homosexual who enjoyed sex with strangers in public places. He also loved to brag about his exploits, never skimping on a detail.
Just when "things" were finally coming together for Orton professionally, things were beginning to unravel for his companion Kenneth Halliwell, who brutally murdered Orton in August 1967. Some would say his rude death befit how he lived the rest of his life. I think that would be judging Joe too harshly. Perhaps he would have been a flash-in-the-pan or as lasting and popular as Stoppard. We'll never know. That's the tragedy. Good job Lahr.
December 7, 2020
The fascinating life and work of Joe Orton.
April 22, 2008
It's not just the biog of Joe Orton - it's as much about Kenneth Halliwell, the "middle-aged non-entity" that killed him. Both of their lives are interesting and feintly depressing. Orton's world - from his working class beginnings with his brow-beaten, unloving father and a slightly insane, highly strung mother and the brother and sister that he hated, right down to his sexual escapades in toilets and deserted buildings. Then Halliwell, who was with his mum when she dropped dead after being stung by a bee, and who stepped over his dad's body one morning after he'd killed himself, in order to turn on the kettle. Even if he did say that you should put your genius into your work, rather than your life, he still managed to do both.
Their life histories were slightly more gripping to me than the literary analysis of the plays, but I was still impressed that the book dealt so seriously and extensively with Orton's work. Was glad I read em all first. Interesting to see how his craft developed - leaving school semi-illiterate, self-educating through reading and Halliwell's influence, tapping out a few pretentious novels, having a hit with Entertaining Mr Sloane, nearly buggering it all up when Loot went horribly wrong... and the rest is history. Interesting how talent is something you have to work at. Sometimes the most talented people are the ones who aren't born with it. Liked the fact that the book isn't chronological too - beginning and ending, full circle, with the end.
If 'You Can't Live As I Have Lived And Not End Up Like This' - the biog of Willie Donaldson had been written by someone who could a. write and b. resist drooling sycophantically at every mention of the subject - as per this book, it could have been this good. Similar worlds, maybe even a more intriguing life.
Their life histories were slightly more gripping to me than the literary analysis of the plays, but I was still impressed that the book dealt so seriously and extensively with Orton's work. Was glad I read em all first. Interesting to see how his craft developed - leaving school semi-illiterate, self-educating through reading and Halliwell's influence, tapping out a few pretentious novels, having a hit with Entertaining Mr Sloane, nearly buggering it all up when Loot went horribly wrong... and the rest is history. Interesting how talent is something you have to work at. Sometimes the most talented people are the ones who aren't born with it. Liked the fact that the book isn't chronological too - beginning and ending, full circle, with the end.
If 'You Can't Live As I Have Lived And Not End Up Like This' - the biog of Willie Donaldson had been written by someone who could a. write and b. resist drooling sycophantically at every mention of the subject - as per this book, it could have been this good. Similar worlds, maybe even a more intriguing life.
April 2, 2021
A captivating biography of one of the most talented writers of the mid-twentieth century stage whose life was cut short much too early on in his life and career. The book is an interesting look into not only the life of Joe Orton the writer, but his main relationship with his lifelong partner (and murderer) Kenneth Halliwell, and a deep dive into the writing of, performances of, and cultural impact of the small number of plays he had written. His stardom was on the rise when his life was taken with nine hammer blows to the head (don’t worry, this is covered extensively in the first ten pages of Lahr’s book), and his cheeky dance with taste, farce, and a global acceptance of homosexuality and sexual freedom that won him as many accolades as old ladies tearing up their programs and stomping on the pieces before leaving the theater early. In many ways, the live of the man mirrors that of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, where the skyrocketing success and wonder of Wolfgang (Orton, in this case) is sucking the identity, attention, and career of Salieri (Halliwell). The big difference is that their relationship was rocky, but was rooted in a deep appreciation and muse of one another while they lived in poverty and squalor – one of them got lucky, and Halliwell simply couldn’t manage the emotional turmoil Orton brought him.
The coolest part of Lahr’s biography is that it seamlessly transitions between literary / theatrical criticism and the anecdotal stories of Orton’s life and work. In fact, I’m not quite sure how it did it so seamlessly at times. The struggles with money, production, and acceptance are juxtaposed with the Orton’s methodology of combining real-life emotions and events from his life into his farcical, fictional characters. He wanted to be the next Oscar Wilde, and was well on his way, revising and rewriting everything hundreds of times while cutting as much as he could. One particular quote that sums up the tragedy of his life and focus of his work is that in his characters and his life, “the establishing of their reality is now a matter of psychic life or death. Each attempt to escape the terror of nonentity, which draws them deeper into it.”
It is this stalemate between the two lifelong lovers that Orton dramatized in his work, an unresolvable binary opposition that strangled their short lives. Prick Up Your Ears is a beautiful, funny biography of two tragic lives.
The coolest part of Lahr’s biography is that it seamlessly transitions between literary / theatrical criticism and the anecdotal stories of Orton’s life and work. In fact, I’m not quite sure how it did it so seamlessly at times. The struggles with money, production, and acceptance are juxtaposed with the Orton’s methodology of combining real-life emotions and events from his life into his farcical, fictional characters. He wanted to be the next Oscar Wilde, and was well on his way, revising and rewriting everything hundreds of times while cutting as much as he could. One particular quote that sums up the tragedy of his life and focus of his work is that in his characters and his life, “the establishing of their reality is now a matter of psychic life or death. Each attempt to escape the terror of nonentity, which draws them deeper into it.”
It is this stalemate between the two lifelong lovers that Orton dramatized in his work, an unresolvable binary opposition that strangled their short lives. Prick Up Your Ears is a beautiful, funny biography of two tragic lives.
April 5, 2020
Picking up John Lahr’s Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton (Now a Sensational Film), the ghoulish reader knows that on 9 August 1967 swinging-London playwright Joe Orton’s brains will be hammered out by his ne’er-do-well common-law husband, Kenneth Halliwell. Feeling tired, Halliwell will gobble twenty-two Nembutals and be dead before Orton fully bleeds out. The first forty Prick Up Your Ears pages dispatch that bloody depravity. For the next 300 pages, circumstances from Orton’s adolescence and university career, and his public-toilet sex romping as an adult, intermingle with painstaking depictions of the grim toil of a writer writing. Orton’s arduous exertions at the typewriter are projected on a backdrop of John Lahr’s recaps of Orton’s flops and hits. The Sensational Film that shares a title with this book reversed Lahr’s proportion of real-life melodrama to literary analysis. Anyone who’s seen Prick Up Your Ears the movie, and found it satisfying, maybe leave your Joe Orton studies at that.
June 28, 2021
Nowadays everyone wants to signal their virtue and pretend that any homosexual relationships is easy and normal - and whoever says otherwise is at best bigoted and backwards. It’s sad to think that in our current political climate this book probably wouldn’t get published. The couple which are the subject of this book admittedly aren’t normal or average in any sense of the word. They are real though.
John Lahr should be recommended for his insights in the background and psychology of his main characters and what led them to behave in the ways they did. It helps that he knew them personally. Even though this real life story is bizarre, I could understand how it happened and why. Fame and the stress it brings with it can do strange things to a person. It seems it can bring out the worst in some people.
John Lahr should be recommended for his insights in the background and psychology of his main characters and what led them to behave in the ways they did. It helps that he knew them personally. Even though this real life story is bizarre, I could understand how it happened and why. Fame and the stress it brings with it can do strange things to a person. It seems it can bring out the worst in some people.
July 25, 2025
An absolutely fantastic biography. Lahr is an incredible writer, with an amazing sense of balance when it comes to constructing a biography and portraying his subjects. I was very impressed with his choice of construction: the first chapter details the last weeks of Orton and Halliwell's lives up to their deaths. After he gets the grisly details out of the way, it's like he's saying to the reader "Okay, you got the spectacle you came for, now let me show you why Orton's life was even more interesting than his death." I liked the way he let Orton's diary and plays speak for him, and he either supplemented them with details from life, or vice versa. He also clearly tried to be as sympathetic to Halliwell as he could despite the mostly negative details of the man's life and of others' opinions. This is an all round excellent biography that was also so much fun to read.
February 28, 2018
Love all the Orton works and regret his life came to such an abrupt end. This diary is honest, crude, and very informative. Loved the photos as well. I was a bit put off by the casual sex-not the stuff in Britain, but the use of young men and boys on holiday. But the recounting of Orton's home life, the neighbors, family, etc. made him very real.
April 16, 2020
I thought this would be more interesting to someone like myself not very familiar with Orton, but I found myself skimming large portions because it reads like a very, very, very long book review. The interesting parts were skimmed over and the boring parts were exhaustive. Maybe his diary would be more interesting to read, not sure if it’s been published.
May 26, 2025
I feel like considering he wrote a diary for years this wasn’t much of a comprehensive or interesting biography. It has lots of cool bits showing links between his plays and his real life but i came away thinking that despite how sad it was that he was murdered it was probably for the best that someone stopped him from having sex with anymore 16 year old moroccan boys
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January 17, 2022Wow - I pick up this book in one of these book-exchange-shelves in Hackney Downs station. Just wow. I wonder if any of Joe’s plays were as half good as his biography.
Watched the film and is not bad neither.
Watched the film and is not bad neither.
May 16, 2022
Very interesting, not just for the life of Joe Orton, but also implicit is the prevailing attitude toward homosexuality at the time it was written (1978). I suspect that Lahr was quite liberal in his attitude for the day. I especially liked how Orton's evolution as a writer was set forth.
January 28, 2019
First-rate material, second-rate biographer
February 1, 2019
Beautifully written, insightful biography.
November 13, 2020
John Lahr does amazing job of capturing Joe Orton, London and his destructive relationship with Kenneth Halliwell.
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May 9, 2022Hugely enjoyable biography of Joe Orton that is as thorough as it is perceptive.
I want to read Orton's Diaries again now.
I want to read Orton's Diaries again now.
August 2, 2024
Fascinating biography of a talent who died far too young at then hands of a jealous partner.
July 4, 2017
Reads like a book report and borrows liberally from Orton's diary. What Lahr contributes to the book about Orton is very little. Aside from the first chapter, the book lacks much "biographical" information, and Lahr get too wrapped up in bring a theatre critic.
April 3, 2013
Don't get me wrong - this biography is very meticulous in its exploration of Orton and his works. Very meticulous indeed. So meticulous in fact that it takes up about two thirds of the book. The other third covers Orton's and Halliwell's relationship revealing little that isn't in the public domain already or on the internet. If you are serious about Orton's works buy this book - if you want an in depth biography you may need to buy something else. Try Simon Shepherd's book 'Because we're Queers' written from a gay man's perspective. Quite academic and goes into detail on the cultural and political climate of the 50s and 60s putting Orton's work in a different light and a healthy balance to this one.
March 14, 2008
Absolutely fantastic. You don't need to be a fan of Joe Orton's plays (but if you are, all the better) to enjoy this excellent biography by long-standing New Yorker theater critic John Lahr. The great thing is that it doesn't just focus on Orton's grisly end -- he was killed by his longtime lover, Kenneth Halliwell, in a murder-suicide -- but delves into the histories of both men, their decade-plus relationship, Orton's thunderstrike of a career, etc. The movie, starring Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina and directed by Stephen Frears, is just as terrific, funny and perverse and mordant. Joe Orton would have loved it.
April 1, 2007
i heart joe orton. he is such a clever and iconoclastic playwright. this biography is insightful and his life was extreme and dramatic. the psychology of his relationship with his partner, Kenneth, and the evolution of his talent as a writer totally make this book. you can also gain a lot of insight into the nature of talent and creativity from reading about his and Kenneth's lives. even if you don't know who he is, or even if he was never famous, reading about him would be enthralling.
September 16, 2012
absolutely stunning in its literary study of each of Orton's plays but then reads like trashy pulp fiction when its contemplating the relationship that leads to murder. Perhaps understandably his years up to first success glossed over but seeing as that is almost his entire life this seems somewhat of a shame. Read to understand the plays, pick up diary to understand the man.
October 8, 2012
Orton flaunted his talents with bravado and flew too close to the sun by provoking his jealous lover with his outrageous behaviour. He was precocious, licentious and vain, but surely one of the most gifted playwrights since Christopher Marlowe. His murder renders me towards bias as to whether he would have gone on to greater achievements.
March 29, 2015
Reading this book before seeing the movie by the same name was perfect. I have always loved the swinging 60's in London as a very definite era that changed taste in music, fashion, language, literature, movies...this includes the beginning of The Beatles, and the hip London Theatre scene,
Joe Orton got by on his charm, sex appeal, and wit while living with the exact opposite.
Joe Orton got by on his charm, sex appeal, and wit while living with the exact opposite.
September 19, 2007
Every gay theater arts person needs to read this book and see the movie. It is a great piece of gay history about who could have been the best gay playwrigt of all time. The Arthur Miller of the theatre world. I really like this author and appreciate the research that he did for this book.
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