Playwright Joe Orton
Little in Joe Orton’s youth indicated he would become one of the most influential playwrights of the 20th century. Orton left school at age 16 after failing a key exam and he struggled for several years as an amateur actor before gaining admittance to the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. There he met Kenneth Halliwell, with whom he developed a life-long partnership that spanned romance, crime, and art.
Taking up where Orton’s schooling had left off, Halliwell encouraged Orton to study the important works of ancient and modern drama. Halliwell, seven years Orton’s senior, supported the pair on a small inheritance. Always in pursuit of free entertainment, Orton and Halliwell began embellishing the dust jackets of books borrowed from the public library and returning the altered texts to the stacks. In 1962, they were jailed for six months for their antics, and, while never denying the crimes, remained convinced that their punishment had more to do with their open homosexuality than with any crime.
The pair collaborated on several unpublished novels, but it wasn’t until Orton struck out on his own that he met with any success, a fact that would eventually alienate and enrage his partner. His first play, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, followed a murderer as he enticed a brother-sister team to help him cover up his crime by appealing sexually to each. Mr. Sloane opened in London in 1964 and on Broadway the following year. Orton’s next play, the raucous crime comedy Loot, debuted in Wimbledon in 1965, where it was met with disdain from audiences and critics alike. Frustrated, Orton revised the work significantly and when it opened in London the following year, the work attracted enthusiastic crowds and garnered several awards. Loot remains a popular favorite.
What the Butler Saw followed Loot and elevated its conceits to new levels of sophistication and theatrical creativity. Drawing on the tradition of comedic farce, characterized by instances of mistaken identity, improbable-and improbably complex-situations, linguistic acrobatics, and sexual deviancy, Orton created a work that was simultaneously the model of its form and a mocking send-up thereof. Set in a private psychiatric clinic, Butler‘s landscape is dotted with the many doors necessary for the rapid coming and going that is a hallmark of the genre. But in Orton’s world this detail doesn’t go unnoticed; when the inspector, Dr. Rance, enters early in the first act, he asks, “Why are there so many doors? Was the house designed by a lunatic?” To which the head of the ward, Dr. Prentice, answers. “Yes. We have him here as a patient from time to time.” Orton also peppers his work with thinly veiled attacks on mid-century British values, undercutting everything from the authority of the police, to the benefits of psychoanalysis, the sanctity of the nuclear family, and the esteem of Winston Churchill. All of this finely tuned chaos and biting commentary is built into a structure that concludes with a hilarious send up of classic theatre, including a Shakespearean reconciliation defiled by incest and a tidy Euripidean deus ex machina.
What the Butler Saw was Orton’s last work, completed just a month before his death at the hands of his longtime partner. As Orton’s critical and commercial success continued to grow, Kenneth Halliwell had remained not only his romantic partner, but took on the roles of editor and dramaturg as well. Orton’s diaries reveal that Halliwell was a perceptive critic who provided many of the revisions his early drafts so often needed. Unfortunately, Halliwell’s contributions were dismissed by a theatre community that couldn’t look past his physical and interpersonal inadequacies. He grew bitter that he was given no credit for his considerable role in Orton’s success and tired of Orton’s increasingly frequent dalliances with other men. On August 9, 1967, Halliwell’s anger peaked. After striking his partner nine times in the head with a hammer, Halliwell shed his blood-soaked clothes and ingested 22 barbiturates, taking his own life. His suicide note read:
If you read his diary, all will be explained. K.H.
P.S. Especially the latter part.
–Marha Olivo
