This volume contains every play written by Joe Orton, who emerged in the 1960s as the most talented comic playwright in recent English history. Orton, who was murdered in 1967 at the age of thirty-four, was considered the direct successor to Wilde, Shaw, and Coward.
Includes:
The Ruffian on the Stair
Entertaining Mr. Sloane
The Good and Faithful Servant
Loot
The Erpingham Camp
Funeral Games
What the Butler Saw

Characters: 4 male, 2 female Full Length, Farce Interior Set Dr. Prentice, a psychiatric doctor in an exclusive, private clinic, is attempting to interview (and seduce) an attractive would-be secretary, Geraldine. Unwttingly surprised by his wife, he hides the girl. The affairs multiply as Mrs. Prentice, being seduced and blackmailed by young bellhop Nicholas Beckett, has promised him the secretarial post. When a government inspector arrives, chaos, underpants and cross-dressing lead the charge. The final tableau reveals "the missing parts of Winston Churchill" held aloft as the curtain falls. The London premiere at the Queen's Theatre in 1969 starred Coral Browne and Sir Ralph Richardson. The New York production later won the Obie Award as Best Foreign Play of The Season. "Hilarious, outrageous...It dazzles!...Wonderfully verbal, toying with words as if they were firecrackers."- The New York Times "Brilliant, witty, the funniest show so far this season." -NBC TV "Madly antic humor."-Associated Press "Hilarious...Joe Orton's best comedy."-CBS TV

Entertaining Mr Sloane was first staged in 1964. Despite its success in performance, and being hailed by Sir Terence Rattigan as 'the best first play' he'd seen in 'thirty odd years', it was not until the London production of Loot in 1966 - less than a year before Joe Orton's untimely death - that theatre audiences and critics began to more fully appreciate the originality of Orton's elegant, alarming and hilarious writing. Introduced by John Lahr, the author of Orton's biography Prick up Your Ears, Entertaining Mr Sloane is now established as an essential part of the repertoire of the modern theatre.

A black farce masterpiece, Loot follows the fortunes of two young thieves, Hal and Dennis. Dennis is a hearse driver for an undertaker. They have robbed the bank next door to the funeral parlour and have returned to Hal's home to hide-out with the loot. Hal's mother has just died and the pair put the money in her coffin, hiding the body elsewhere in the house. With the arrival of Inspector Truscott, the thickened plot turns topsy-turvy. Playing with all the conventions of popular farce, Orton creates a world gone mad and examines in detail English attitudes at mid-century. The play has been called a Freudian nightmare, which sports with superstitions about death - and life. It is regularly produced in professional and amateur productions. First produced in London in 1966, LOOT was hailed as "the most genuinely quick-witted, pungent and sprightly entertainment by a new, young British playwright for a decade" (Sunday Telegraph)

Published fifty years after the premiere of Entertaining Mr Sloane in 1964, and with a new introduction, this anniversary edition offers an opportunity to reappraise Joe Orton's reputation, and the status of his first major play, from a twenty-first century perspective. When it first appeared in the Swinging Sixties, Orton's satire on social and sexual hypocrisy both scandalized and delighted audiences. Its mix of sexuality and violence was explosive. Within a year, the play was being performed around the world and went on to be adapted for film and television, establishing Orton as a major voice and this play as one of the most ground-breaking of the century. This anniversary edition features previously unpublished material from the Joe Orton Archive, an interview with director Nick Bagnall, and an introduction by Emma Parker, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Leicester.

Five outstanding plays from the British theatre of the 1960s. This volume contains major works by five of the most important playwrights ot emerge during the late fifties and early sixties. Bold, challenging and iconoclastic, these plays are landmarks of post-war British theatre. Roots by Arnold Wesker focuses on the homecoming of young Beatie Bryant who returns to her family of Norfolk farm workers with stories of her boyfriend Ronnie. Serjeant Musgrave's Dance by John Arden is set in a mining town in the 19th century, with a group of soldiers returned from a colonial war. But when Musgrave is asked to keep the peace with the colliery workers, he decides to do so in a rather unusual way. Loot by Joe Orton is a brilliant parody of the skeleton-in-the-cupboard crime genre, exploding the very notions of English decency, good citizenry and traditional 'positions'. Edward Bond's Early Morning re-imagines the time of Victoria and Albert caught up in a military coup plotted by Disraeli. Peter Barnes' Ruling Class describes the fall out in an aristocratic family after the 14th Earl commits suicide and leaves his estate to a schizophrenic Franciscan friar who is under the illusion that he is Jesus.

I suppose I'm a believer in Original Sin. People are profoundly bad but irresistibly funny' Joe Orton. This volume contains everything that Orton wrote for the theatre, radio and television from his first play in 1964, The Ruffian on the Stair, up to his violent death in 1967 at the age of 34. It includes his major successes: Entertaining Mr Sloane, which 'made more blood boil that any other British play in the last ten years' (The Times); Loot, 'a Freudian nightmare', which sports with superstitions about death - as well as life; his farce masterpiece, What the Butler Saw; The Erpingham Camp, his version of The Bacchae, set in a Butlin's holiday resort; together with his television plays, Funeral Games and The Good and Faithful Servant. The volume includes a revealing introduction by John Lahr, Orton's official biographer."He is the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility" (Observer)

Written during the last eight months of his life, these diaries are an unfiltered narration of the life of Joe Orton, the extremely successful and famous British playwright. On August 9, 1967, Orton was murdered in London by Kenneth Halliwell, his lover of 16 years, who bludgeoned him with a hammer and then immediately committed suicide. Halliwell left a note that said that all would be explained if the police read Orton's diaries. In the diaries, Orton narrates his literary success, his sexual escapades--at his mother's funeral, with a dwarf in Brighton, and, extensively, in Tangiers--and the breakdown of his "marriage" to Halliwell, the relationship that transformed his life and ultimately ended it. "Escritos durante los ultimos ocho meses de su vida, estos diarios son una narracion sin restriccion alguna de la vida de Joe Orton, el sumamente exitoso y famoso dramaturgo ingles. El 9 de agosto de 1967, en Londres, Orton fue asesinado a martillazos por Kenneth Halliwell, su amante de 16 anos, quien se suicido inmediatamente despues. Halliwell dejo una nota que decia que todo quedaria explicado cuando la policia leyera los diarios de Orton. En los diarios, Orton narra su exito literario, sus aventuras sexuales--en el funeral de su madre, con un enano en Brighton y, profusamente, en Tanger--y la descomposicion de su "matrimonio" a Halliwell, la relacion que le cambio la vida y que termino por destruirla."

A black farce masterpiece, Loot follows the fortunes of two young thieves, Hal and Dennis. Dennis is a hearse driver for an undertaker. They have robbed the bank next door to the funeral parlour and have returned to Hal's home to hide-out with the loot. Hal's mother has just died and the pair put the money in her coffin, hiding the body elsewhere in the house. With the arrival of Inspector Truscott, the thickened plot turns topsy-turvy. Playing with all the conventions of popular farce, Orton creates a world gone mad and examines in detail English attitudes at mid-century. The play has been called a Freudian nightmare, which sports with superstitions about death - and life. It is regularly produced in professional and amateur productions. First produced in London in 1966, Loot was hailed as "the most genuinely quick-witted, pungent and sprightly entertainment by a new, young British playwright for a decade" (Sunday Telegraph). The Student Edition offers a plot summary, full commentary, character notes and questions for study, besides a chronology and bibliography.

"To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich, and happy is surely going against nature". When Joe Orton (1933-1967) wrote those words in his diary in May 1967, he was being hailed as the greatest comic playwright since Oscar Wilde for his darkly hilarious Entertaining Mr. Sloane and the farce hit Loot, and was completing What the Butler Saw; but less than three months later, his longtime companion, Kenneth Halliwell, smashed Orton's skull in with a hammer before killing himself. The Orton Diaries, written during his last eight months, chronicle in a remarkably candid style his outrageously unfettered life: his literary success, capped by an Evening Standard Award and overtures from the Beatles; his sexual escapades - at his mother's funeral, with a dwarf in Brighton, and, extensively, in Tangiers; and the breakdown of his sixteen-year "marriage" to Halliwell, the relationship that transformed and destroyed him. Edited with a superb introduction by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries is his crowning achievement.

"Joe Orton's last play, What the Butler Saw, will live to be accepted as a comedy classic of English literature" (Sunday Telegraph) The chase is on in this breakneck comedy of licensed insanity, from the moment when Dr Prentice, a psychoanalyst interviewing a prospective secretary, instructs her to undress. The plot of What the Butler Saw contains enough twists and turns, mishaps and changes of fortune, coincidences and lunatic logic to furnish three or four conventional comedies. But however the six characters in search of a plot lose the thread of the action - their wits or their clothes - their verbal self-possession never deserts them. Hailed as a modern comedy every bit as good as Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Orton's play is regularly produced, read and studied. What the Butler Saw was Orton's final play."He is the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility" (Observer)