Joe Orton: A Casebook (review)

Joe Orton: A Casebook is one of a series published by Routledge that gathers essays exploring the work of a particular playwright. Francesca Coppa's collection is an excellent scholarly resource, comprising twelve essays, a brief chronology, and a selected bibliography that, while not as complete as one might hope, offers valuable resources.

It is difficult to analyze Joe Orton's work simply on its own merits. Like Tennessee Williams's, Orton's personal life seems so influential to his work that many critics (including John Lahr in his 1977 Orton biography Prick Up Your Ears) feel the need to put Orton's work in the specific context of his background. Acknowledging this, Coppa has split Joe Orton: A Casebook into two sections: "Texts," which deals directly with Orton's plays qua writing; and "Contexts," in which Orton's work is examined in direct connection to his life.

"Texts" begins with an essay entitled "The Creation of Comedy in Entertaining Mr. Sloane." In it, Don Lawson eloquently describes Orton creating a play that seems "well made," and then purposefully turning it on its ear, forcing audiences to examine notions of good theatre. This rebellion against passive theatre-watching finds its way into most of Orton's works. In "The Good and Faithful Servant: Orton's Bitter Farce," Maurice Charney calls Faithful Servant Orton's most personal and acidic work, as well as being overtly political (Charney insists Marxist). Charney compellingly concludes that The Good and Faithful Servant is "Orton's most naked play, a bleak expression of despair" and is "as close as he ever comes to savage farce" (25). "You Say You Want a Revolution: Joe Orton's The Erpingham Camp as the Bacchae of the 1960s," by Patricia Juliana Smith, makes the case that Orton's Euripidean rewrite is a thinly disguised queer play. Not overtly pro gay (Orton's works were scrutinized by Lord Chamberlain's office), The Erpingham Camp instead attacks heterosexism and Western civilization as a whole. Smith makes a clear and specific argument that brings immense insight into this otherwise forgotten work. John Bull's "'What the Butler Did See': Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde," offers an in-depth analysis of Orton and the author to whom he has most often been compared. Economics and class seem to be the primary divisions Bull exposes, while proving the authors shared a similar wit, sexuality, and even criminal background. Had Orton lived, claims Bull, he would have been able to forge a more specific identity, building upon rather than echoing Wilde's work.

On the opposite side of the coin, Orton is compared to Jane Austen in John Halperin's "Sex and Subversion in Jane Austen, and Joe Orton." Halperin makes a persuasive case for the similarity between the two authors in genre, values, and even syntax. While generally insightful, at times Halperin's analysis is obvious: "Both authors mean to shock" (67). "A Normal Family: Alternative Communities in the Plays of Joe Orton and Caryl Churchill," by Janet E. Gardner, concludes part 1. Gardner makes a strong case that Churchill and Orton similarly try to shift society's ideas about normality, family, and community through rage and idealism.

"Contexts" begins with Alan Sinfield arguing in his essay "Is There A Queer Tradition, And Is Orton In It?" that 1956 was a time of dramatic revolution. That was the year when young, working-class playwrights started gaining notoriety. Sinfield makes a gripping argument that the revolution was not driven by class inequality but was actually about sexuality, with masculine characters (by extension, heterosexuality) reclaiming their place from the rather fey ones (homosexuals). Sinfield sees Orton as a link between the two traditions: a hypermasculine angry young man who is also gay. Jonathan Dollimore contributes the very brief "Orton's Black Camp," which explores Orton's desire to attack normality while refusing to offer "an earnest moral alternative" (97). Randall Nakayama's "Sensation and Sensibility: Joe Orton's Diaries" turns a critical eye to Orton's diaries, noting...