As one of Britain's legendary group of Angry Young Men dramatists, Joe
Orton shot to fame on the strength of vicious farces like Loot and
What the Butler Saw. Today, with Orton's work garnering increasing
attention and recognition in the wake of the 1987 feature film about his
life, Prick Up Your Ears, his early writing has still remained
obscure. Now the publication of these two recently discovered plays,
written immediately before his breakthrough successes, reveals a key
moment in his development as a dramatist. Fred & Madge, Orton's first
play, is an absurdist drama, fraught with social critique and sexual
innuendo. It's the story of a married couple whose respective jobs are
the Sisyphean task of rolling boulders uphill and sieving water all day
long, until they discover they are inhabiting a play about themselves.
The Visitors is a brutally realistic rendering of a dying man who is
visited in the hospital by his middle-aged daughter, while the attending
nurses spend more time fighting than caring for their patients. Written
in 1961, it shows the beginnings of the mature voice that would come to
fruition in his next projects, The Ruffian on the Stair and
Entertaining Mr. Sloane, which made his name in London and the world.
