Joe Orton
born Jan. 1, 1933, Leicester,
Leicestershire, Eng.
died Aug. 9, 1967, London
British playwright noted for his outrageous
and macabre farces.
Orton was originally an unsuccessful
actor. He turned to writing in the late
1950s under the encouragement of his
lifelong companion, K.L. Halliwell. A
handful of novels the pair wrote at this
time were not published, however, and it was
not until 1964 that Orton had his first
success, when his radio play The Ruffian on
the Stair was broadcast by the BBC. From
then until his death in 1967 Orton had a
brilliant success as a playwright. His three
full-length plays, Entertaining Mr. Sloane
(1964), Loot (1965), and What the Butler Saw
(produced posthumously, 1969), were
outrageous and unconventional black comedies
that scandalized audiences with their
examination of moral corruption, violence,
and sexual rapacity. Orton’s writing was
marked by epigrammatic wit and an
incongruous polish, his characters reacting
with comic propriety to the scandalous and
disturbing situations in which they found
themselves involved. He also wrote four
one-act plays during these years, including
Funeral Games (1968).
Orton’s career was cut tragically short
when he was beaten to death by Halliwell, a
less successful writer, who immediately
afterward committed suicide.
