Prick Up Your Ears

Truth is stranger than fiction and fiction often goes close to the bone of the writer's real life. The death of playwright Joe Orton - bludgeoned with a hammer by his partner, Kenneth Halliwell - wouldn't seem out of place in one of Orton's grotesquely funny and sinister comedies. Simon Bent's new play about Orton and Halliwell draws on Orton's diaries and borrows its title from an unrealised play (also borrowed by John Lahr's biography of the playwright and Stephen Frears's 1987 film). Its most triumphantly Orton-esque touch is its third character: the lovers' long-suffering landlady, Mrs Corden (pitched perfectly by Gwen Taylor as a mixture of motherly devotion, cockney broad-mindedness and prurient curiosity). But despite the sharp dialogue, strong casting (of excellent Orton lookalike Chris New and 'Little Britain' star Matt Lucas) and horrifically fascinating story, I couldn't help wishing that Orton had written the script.

That pang of regret doesn't hinder enjoyment of this claustrophobic and compelling production (designer Peter McKintosh recreates Orton and Halliwell's one-room Islington flat, with Halliwell's pictures gradually turning the walls into an horrific collaged audience of goddesses and sawn-off marble buttocks). Matt Lucas twitches and jerks his way into the increasingly deranged role of Halliwell, whom Bent makes the central character here. Lucas and New play Orton and Halliwell as a double act whose sense of humour turns increasingly nasty under the pressure of Orton's fame and Halliwell's failure. The skits and tomfoolery of their early days - before their stint in separate prisons for defacing library books turned Orton into a solo writing act - make you sympathise with their bond.

New is convincing when he is cruelly insouciant about Halliwell's mental illness (made very obvious early on by Lucas). But neither Daniel Kramer's production nor Bent's play shows you what kept them together to the bitter, blood-spattered end.