Prick Up Your Ears
From: Thursday, 17th September 2009
To: Sunday, 15 November 2009
Our Review: 
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Synopsis
1962. Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton - RADA graduates, aspiring playwrights, and sometime lovers - plot their rightful place at the centre of London’s literary scene whilst engaged in a secret crusade to "improve" the local library books, all in the worst possible taste of course, and acting out their own versions of popular radio dramas... with an extra dash of innuendo. But after a short interlude at Her Majesty’s pleasure, Joe is about to become the greatest, and most notorious comic playwright since Oscar Wilde, whilst Ken stays indoors re-decorating, reduced to sharing Joe’s success with their neighbour, Mrs Corden, over tea and a slice of battenburg. Prick Up Your Ears - a darkly funny and moving play imagines what really happened when, after years of creative collaboration, the door slammed shut and Kenneth was home alone. It tells the sensational story behind the domestic life of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, holed up in a tiny flat in Islington, trading well-trodden insults and hilarious put-downs like any old married couple.
Our Review:
Michael Coveney - 1 October 2009
Yet more hitching of lifts by contemporary playwrights as Simon Bent jumps on the Joe Orton bandwagon with this study of the disintegration of the friendship and creative partnership of Kenneth Halliwell and the sneering, baby-faced author of Loot and Entertaining Mr Sloane.
It’s both a good idea and a bad idea: good, because in the performances of Matt Lucas as the bald, tragically excluded Halliwell and Chris New as the “Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility” (as Ronald Bryden famously dubbed him) we are blessed; bad, because we’ve been here before.
The title Prick Up Your Ears was Orton’s own (with a rude anagram at the end) for his next play that never happened. It was adopted by John Lahr for his magnificent biography and then by Stephen Frears for his brilliant film, scripted by Alan Bennett, starring Alfred Molina and Gary Oldman.
Bent narrows it all down to the Islington bedsit ...
Latest User Review
Mark Ponsford - 30 October 2009:
I found this a thoroughly engrossing and entertaining piece. Three perfect performances. Con O'Neill superb - one of our finest actors....
Cast
Michael Chadwick (Kenneth Halliwell - until Oct 22)
Con O'Neill (Kenneth Halliwell - from Oct 22)
Chris New (Orton)
Gwen Taylor (Mrs Corden)
Creative
Simon Bent (Author)
Sonia Friedman Productions (Producer)
Kim Poster (for Stanhope Productions) (Producer)
Lee Menzies (Producer)
Daniel Kramer (Director)
Peter McKintosh (Design)
Peter Mumford (Lighting)
Gareth Owen (Sound)
Information
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