The Entertaining Mr. Orton: How Joe Orton's Plays Can Outgrow the ‘Swinging Sixties’

Abstract

This re-examination of the plays of 1960s farceur Joe Orton reveals that his plays can survive the passage of time as well as cultural displacement. Orton's skill lies in using the medium of the theatre to create a liminal situation, whereby all the signs and subtexts can crystallize into accessible images, which are explored here from a semiotic perspective. Orton's scrupulous understanding of genre and plot construction enables him to pay lip-service to a specific genre, as he simultaneously mocks modern realistic theatre conventions; the one-room settings are examined for their metonymic function, and the props and costume are considered from the semiotic perspective of vectorization. This fresh approach to Joe Orton elucidates how the plays have their own intrinsic dramatic merit, independent of their original 1960s context: Orton plays games with his audiences, and game-playing is a universal pastime.