{"id":14749,"date":"2014-01-06T01:47:52","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T01:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=14749"},"modified":"2017-08-12T14:38:01","modified_gmt":"2017-08-12T13:38:01","slug":"a-genius-like-us-a-portrait-of-joe-orton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2014\/01\/06\/a-genius-like-us-a-portrait-of-joe-orton\/","title":{"rendered":"A Genius Like Us: A Portrait of Joe Orton"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last week’s reading was the script of Joe Orton’s Loot<\/em> after finding one of the first published editions of the play. Reading a play is never the same as seeing it performed, of course, but it’s still very funny, and many of its digs at police corruption haven’t dated at all. There is a film of Loot<\/em><\/a> but it’s poor stuff, with Richard Attenborough miscast as the belligerent Inspector Truscott. Much better is Douglas Hickox’s film of Entertaining Mr Sloane<\/em><\/a> (1970) which appeared shortly before Loot<\/em>, and which is worth seeing for Beryl Reid reprising her stage role as the unfortunate Kath.<\/p>\n

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Orton’s brief career\u2014a mere four years from complete obscurity in 1963 to his death at the hands of partner Kenneth Halliwell in 1967\u2014is explored in\u00a0A Genius Like Us: A Portrait of Joe Orton<\/em><\/a>, a 70-minute BBC Arena documentary from 1982. Anyone who’s seen Prick Up Your Ears<\/em><\/a> (1987)\u2014Stephen Frears’ Orton biopic with a script by Alan Bennett\u2014will be familiar with the train of events. Pamela Brighton and Nigel Williams’ film interviews some of the real people who appear in Prick Up Your Ears<\/em>, notably surviving members of Orton’s family and Orton biographer John Lahr. In addition there’s a substantial contribution from Kenneth Williams, a close friend of Orton and Halliwell’s who was also badly miscast as Inspector Truscott in the first disastrous performances of Loot<\/em>. Between the interviews there are some scenes from a lacklustre TV performance of Loot<\/em>, a stage performance of What the Butler Saw<\/em>, and bits of Entertaining Mr Sloane<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Malicious Damage<\/a>
\n\u2022 Joe Orton Online<\/a>
\n\u2022 Joe Orton<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week’s reading was the script of Joe Orton’s Loot after finding one of the first published editions of the play. Reading a play is never the same as seeing it performed, of course, but it’s still very funny, and many of its digs at police corruption haven’t dated at all. There is a film … Continue reading “A Genius Like Us: A Portrait of Joe Orton”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,7,5,19,46],"tags":[1012,5607,5606,2963,2965,2964,2115,5609,5605,5608],"class_list":["post-14749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-film","category-gay","category-television","category-theatre","tag-alan-bennett","tag-beryl-reid","tag-douglas-hickox","tag-joe-orton","tag-john-lahr","tag-kenneth-halliwell","tag-nigel-williams","tag-pamela-brighton","tag-richard-attenborough","tag-stephen-frears"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-3PT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}