9 August 2017 marks 50 years since the untimely death of Joe Orton, the controversial playwright and provocateur who rose from working class Leicester lad to the toast of swinging 60s London - not forgetting a brief pitstop in prison - before his promising future was cut short at the hands of his long-term partner, Kenneth Halliwell.
On the 50th anniversary of Orton's death, we're looking back on the man and the myth, as well his plays that made the move from the theatres of London to the big screen. The centrepiece of our celebrations is the release of Stephen Frears' rollicking biopic, Prick Up Your Ears - alongside this, we're also pleased to announce that two lesser-known adaptations of Orton's work will be screening across the UK from new digital prints.
Entertaining Mr Sloane
Cinema Rediscovered, the UK's festival of classic film, join our Orton celebration with a strand devoted to the writer that includes a preview screening of Prick Up Your Ears as well as the UK premiere of the new DCP of Entertaining Mr Sloane.
Orton's first play to be performed on the stage, Entertaining Mr Sloane is the story of a skewed love triangle involving a brother and sister competing for the affections of a decidedly un-gentlemanly lodger. Reaching screens in 1970 - 6 years after its stage debut - this adaptation takes full advantage of the greater room for manoeuvre afforded by a more liberal time. As a result, some of the play's underlying pathos and subtler elements of class satire are sidelined to allow for greater emphasis on its shocking sexual politics and camp credentials (think frustrated nymphomaniacs, pink Pontiac convertibles and pseudo-fetish wear, and you're there) - but Orton's original dialogue still stings and leaves it mark, with Beryl Reid and Harry Andrews giving particularly game contributions as the battling siblings.
Loot
Loot, Orton's West End follow-up to Sloane and the play that really established him as a talent to watch, came to the big screen in the same year as its predecessor. Close to the bone subject matter and swipes at the establishment of the day are again evident as key features in Orton's developing style - but there's also a more marked sense of formal experimentation as the writer takes the tradition of theatrical farce to dizzying new highs or, as some audiences would have it, vulgar new lows.
The set-up is unsurprisingly complex, comprising two young thieves, a coffin full of stolen cash, a peripatetic corpse, an unconventional police detective and a gold-digging nurse with murderous intentions. Richard Attenborough, sporting a Clouseau-esque moustache and mac combo, takes on the Inspector Truscott role first written for Kenneth Williams in the play's opening run, while Lee Remick vamps it up as the nurse with her sights set on Milo O'Shea's befuddled widower.
Read more about the release of Prick Up Your Ears
Read more about Cinema Rediscovered
