Prick Up Your Ears - Review (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Prick Up Your Ears - Review

3:14pm Thursday 27th August 2009 in Leisure

Prick Up your Ears, Richmond Theatre

The murder of playwright Joe Orton by his lover Kenneth Halliwell robbed Britain of one its brightest talents and Simon Bent's new play, Prick Up Your Ears, which premiered at Richmond Theatre this week, tells their story with a well-judged blend of humour and pathos.

Set within the confines of the couple's Islington flat and inspired by John Lahr's biography of the same name, the play charts the couple's rebellious days as literary outsiders defacing library books (behaviour that led to a spell in prison for the pair) to the tragic end of their relationship when Halliwell bludgeoned his famous lover to death before killing himself.

Starring Little Britain's Matt Lucas as Halliwell and Chris New as Orton, Prick Up Your Ears is, in the best tradition of Orton, a black comedy and it sheds plenty of light on what went on behind the closed doors of their Noel Road flat.

It is always a tricky task for a dramatist to recreate real events and people. By setting the play exclusively in the flat, Bent places Orton and Halliwell in isolation from the outside world, bar the odd interruption from their nosy but warm-hearted landlady Mrs Corden (a sparkling Gwen Taylor), and it gives the writer a chance to put forward his own interpretation of how Orton and Halliwell developed as individuals and as a couple.

We get an enormous amount of factual information about the pair and there are a number of references to Orton's writing. However the dramatic arc stays strong as Joe's career goes stellar and Halliwell's mental state disintegrates.

New resists the temptation to take centre stage by turning Orton into a camp caricature. His restrained performance allows the more obscure figure of Halliwell to become the real subject of the play, with Lucas rising to the challenge of bringing this eccentric character to life.

He is utterly convincing – first as a budding writer, convinced of his own genius and delighted to have Orton in his thrall and then as the drug addled recluse, looming over his younger lover in his underpants.

As Halliwell's mental state darkens so the collages of art work he meticulously constructs on the flat walls grow and grow until the stage is a tall, dim and echoing prison cell. It is an effective, if somewhat heavy handed, piece of symbolism.

Inevitably the murder also casts a long shadow over the play. The audience know what's coming and for the most part it tempers the raucous comic interplay between Lucas, New and Taylor.

However, the pace of the action slows in the final third of the play once Halliwell's madness takes full grip. He starts munching pills incessantly, reading Orton's diary and scrawling graffiti on his beloved collages.

With Lucas having no chance to develop Halliwell further, the audience find themselves waiting for the murder, rather than having it sprung on them, as it must have been sprung on Orton himself.

It is a shame but it is not totally derail the play's denoument. When the violence comes it is quick and brutal and as the curtain drops on Lucas' bloodied Halliwell, the tragedy of this very odd couple is brought into sharp focus.

Will Gore