Getting away with it

"I had the upbringing a nun would envy. Until I was fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body."

"The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste invariably have very bad taste."

“Cleanse my heart... Give me the ability to rage correctly”

"My plays are about getting away with it and the ones who get away with it are the guilty, it's the innocents who get it in the neck. That all seems pretty true to life to me, not a fantasy at all. I've got away with it so far, and I'm going to go on."

John Kingsley ("Joe") Orton (1st January 1933 – 9th August 1967)

"I’m in the rude under this dress"

From Cinedelica:

It's still very much a play in all but name - the limited cast of just four main characters, the almost farce-like plot and the limited number of location shots. All the action revolves around Mr Sloane, a hip teen played with some style (and occasional menace) by Peter McEnery. He's "adopted" by Kath (Beryl Reid), a mature woman still in mourning for her long-dead lover and despite the concerns of her "Dadda" - who believes he knows Mr Sloane as the murderer of a past acquaintance.

But there's another problem - Mr Sloane also catches the eye of Kath's brother Ed (played superbly by Harry Andrews), a slightly camp man who drives a large pink US car and has no time at all for the role of women in society. Ed wants Mr Sloane to come under his wing and follow his example - and for personal gain, Sloane is all too willing. And as the adoration for him grows, Sloane starts to play brother and sister off each other for further gain - until things start to go very wrong.

Entertaining Mr Sloane was one of only two plays from the warped imagination of our icon Joe Orton to receive a screen adaptation (the other being Loot), and, like much of his work - on stage and off - received a mixed reception.

In my opinion, the bravura performances of the magnificently camp Beryl Reid, the tongue-in-cheek Harry Andrews and the sexy-yet-menacing Peter McEnery lift the movie above any accusations of "staginess" or "lack of sympathy". Their characterisations have exactly the right balance of sleaze and obsessiveness that Joe's monstrous creations - surely an influence on later "monsters" in the works of Peter Barnes or Mike Leigh - need in order for the film to succeed.

"What have you to offer? You're fat and the crow's-feet under your eyes would make you an object of terror."

"I’ve been doing my washing today and I haven’t a stitch on... except my shoes... I’m in the rude under this dress. I tell you because you’re bound to have noticed..."

Monsters or no, this movie remains one of my favourites of its type, and I believe its artistry fits perfectly between the demise of the era of censorship at the end of the 60s and the smuttiness yet to come in the 70s.

Entertaining Mr Sloane trailer

Entertaining Mr Sloane was released just three years after Joe - who would have been 79 years old on 1st January 2012 - was murdered by Ken.

I wish he had lived to see it. I think he too would have approved!

A cottage made for two

Joe Orton is very much in mind at the moment, and to that end let us concentrate on one of the great man's favourite obsessions...

The Disappearing Gentlemen's Lavatories of Old London

Cottaging

"It is perhaps inevitable that within the vagaries of English slang a word so redolent of the English village, Miss Marple and vicars cycling to give evening sermons, should come to be associated with acts so unspeakable and perverted that they are morally repugnant to your average citizen. Yet on the fiftieth year since Lord Wolfenden, a man so repulsed by the deviancy of the homosexual act that his report found it necessary to recommended its legalisation, the fortieth since the death at his lover’s hands of the eminence grise of the cottage, Joe Kingsley Orton, it is perhaps appropriate to consider what has happened to this most Anglo-Saxon of leisure pursuits.

"It is an activity once favoured by playwrights, pop stars, politicians and Republican Senators from Idaho, allegedly with codes of its very own. Yet it is also in sad decline... cottaging has through its long and honourable history (since 1729) remained a purely gay pursuit; partly because of the puritanical attitude towards sex than has always existed in the English social body, but mainly because the idea of unisex public lavatories never caught on."

The Strange Decline of the English Cottage is the title of a blog, a research project, and (hopefully) a forthcoming documentary that will be shown on BBC4.

I can't wait - it sounds fascinating, and Joe would be proud...

The Joe Orton exhibition Malicious Damage runs until 21 January 2012 at Islington Museum, Finsbury Library, 245 St John Street, London, EC1V

Good taste, good books

"The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste invariably have very bad taste." Joe Orton

Malicious Damage - an exhibition at Islington Museum, 13 October 2011 – 25 February 2012.
In 1962 the aspiring playwright Joe Orton and his partner and mentor Kenneth Halliwell were each sentenced to six months imprisonment for malicious damage to Islington Public Library books. The offenders were found guilty of stealing and ‘doctoring’ library book covers with images from other sources or by adding new text and narrative. They also removed illustrations from library art books to ‘wallpaper’ their bed-sit at 25 Noel Road.

During imprisonment Joe Orton embarked upon what was to be a successful but all too brief writing career, cut short by his murder at the jealous hand of his partner. Malicious Damage tells the story surrounding the crimes of Orton and Halliwell and, for the first time at Islington Museum, offers the opportunity to view all of the surviving doctored book covers along with other material reflecting the life and work of the pair.

Two events at the Islington Museum, organised to coincide with the exhibition, are also a must-see:

Kenneth Williams, Joe Orton and the debacle of Felicity’s 21st birthday, Thursday 17 November, 6.30pm
Journalist and author of Born Brilliant: the life of Kenneth Williams, Christopher Stevens reveals the intriguing story surrounding the last week of the ill-fated 1965 tour of Joe Orton’s Loot, which starred the Islington-born and much-loved comic actor Williams.

Malicious Collage: The art of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, Thursday 1 December, 6.30pm
Ilsa Colsell is the author of Malicious Damage, a new book about the crimes of playwright Joe Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell, published jointly by Islington Library and Heritage Services and Donlon books. In conversation, the author will discuss and explore events surrounding the illicit library book collage work that led to Orton and Halliwell each receiving six months imprisonment. The discussion will conclude with a question and answer session.

Islington Museum

Joe Orton online