The Complete Plays: The Ruffian on the Stair, Entertaining Mr. Sloan, the Good and Faithful Servant, Loot, the Erpingham Camp, Funeral Games, What the Butler Saw [Paperback]

Joe Orton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 1994

This volume contains every play written by Joe Orton, who emerged in the 1960s as the most talented comic playwright in recent English history and was considered the direct successor to Wilde, Shaw, and Coward.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st Grove Weidenfeld evergreen ed edition (January 12, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802132154
• ISBN-13: 978-0802132154
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #113,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Droll plays with no redeeming value whatsoever., April 17, 2002

By 

miles@riverside (Indio, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Plays: The Ruffian on the Stair, Entertaining Mr. Sloan, the Good and Faithful Servant, Loot, the Erpingham Camp, Funeral Games, What the Butler Saw (Paperback)

Tragic, brutal things happen to the characters in these plays. But none of these people is particularly likeable, so you can't really care. It's all just as well for them, in some ways, and it's all in good fun. The characters manipulate each other, lie to each other, steal from each other, screw each other, kill each other, and deny that they do it. Everyone here has the ethics of a doorknob, and it's all pretty enjoyable.

The last one, "What The Butler Saw", got a little bit too ridiculously farcical for my taste and went on too long, but it has its moments; and otherwise they're all pretty good to read.

I can also recommend the introduction. Joe Orton lived his own life very much like the people in his plays (which makes you wonder how much of his material was supposed to be comedy). Even his death was true to form: his envious lover, actor Kenneth Halliwell, bashed in Orton's brains with a hammer just prior to doing himself in with 22 sleeping tablets.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Master Of Brutal Comedy, October 5, 2005

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Plays: The Ruffian on the Stair, Entertaining Mr. Sloan, the Good and Faithful Servant, Loot, the Erpingham Camp, Funeral Games, What the Butler Saw (Paperback)

Although he is considered among England's greatest playwrights, today Joe Orton (1933-1967) is better known for the way in which he died--his head beaten in with a hammer by his long-time lover Kenneth Halliwell--than for his works. It is a bitter and ridiculous irony that might have been lifted from one of his own plays. It is also a great pity, for Orton was a comic genius whose plays equal the best of English with from Congreve to Wilde to Coward. And if you like your comedy with an ample edge of mean-spiritedness, brutality, cruelty, and flat-out viciousness, Orton is the man for you.

THE COMPLETE PLAYS is not as complete as the title implies, for the text leaves out several titles that never received any production during Orton's lifetime. Still, it does collect the major titles, and that in itself is enough to earn it a place on any serious play-reader's shelf.

Originally presented as a BBC radio program, THE RUFFIAN ON THE STAIR presents the story of Joyce, an unmarried woman of dubious background who is now under the control of Mike, an older man who has mysterious assignations that lead to a fateful encounter with a boy hairdresser named Wilson--whose lover (or brother, depending on how you think about it) may have been a victim of one of Mike's covert operations. It got Orton noticed, and his next effort would truly put him on the map: ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE was and is one of the salaciously funny comedies ever brought to the stage, the wickedly funny tale of an aging sex-crazed woman and her homosexual brother who use their father's murder as a means of blackmailing a young thug into their respective beds.

THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT, THE ERPINGHAM CAMP, and FUNERAL GAMES have much to offer but are actually minor titles in comparison with the two plays that critics consider great masterpieces: LOOT, a bitterly savage farce concerning a robbery, a death in the family, and the uses to which you can put Mother's coffin (not to mention false teeth) in a pinch; and WHAT THE BUTLER SAW, set in a psychiatrist's office in which everyone has truly gone round the bend.

Orton was a master of language that forces you to laugh even as it cuts you like a straight-edged razor across the throat; you can't help but laugh even as you collapse bleeding to the floor. Even so, it is worth pointing out that plays are really written to be performed rather than read, and this particularly true of Orton; unless you have a very strong background in theatre you may do better to wait for your local rep company to take up the challenge.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Orton: Without Apology, July 30, 2001

By 

"umd_cyberpunk" (MA, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Plays: The Ruffian on the Stair, Entertaining Mr. Sloan, the Good and Faithful Servant, Loot, the Erpingham Camp, Funeral Games, What the Butler Saw (Paperback)

This collection of (the late) Joe Orton's plays is amazing. Not for those who are easily offended or whose feelings are hurt. Orton, who was described as a "poor Oscar Wilde," lived up to the name. His plays are fast paced assults on everything that the British hold dear. There is no respect for religion, custom, death or social norms.

Satirical and full of quick wit, Orton's plays attack British culture and spit on everything that the "respectable person," would hold dear.

Orton does not hold back anything and could come on a bit strong for a conservative reader, but my suggestion is that any lover of drama and theater should own and read these plays.