Revis­it­ing for­got­ten queer clas­sic Prick Up Your Ears

Stephen Frears’ biopic of gay play­wright Joe Orton is a dark­ly com­ic treat with out­stand­ing per­for­mances from Gary Old­man as Orton and Alfred Moli­na as his lover-turned-killer Ken­neth Hal­li­well. This year marks the 30^th anniver­sary of the film, which is based on Alan Bennett’s fan­tas­tic screen­play and deliv­ers the kind of twist­ed humour that made Orton’s work so popular.

It’s also 50 years since Orton’s untime­ly death at the hands of Hal­li­well, just a few days after the 1967 Sex­u­al Offences Act decrim­i­nalised pri­vate homo­sex­u­al acts. It seems a par­tic­u­lar tragedy that the cou­ple, who are depict­ed in the film as refer­ring to one anoth­er euphemisti­cal­ly as friends and house­mates, were nev­er able to cel­e­brate the begin­nings of a free­dom that is being remem­bered today… but then, as Frears’ film shows, there was a lot going on behind the scenes of Orton’s pop­u­lar plays.

The film begins where the sto­ry ends; in Orton and Halliwell’s heav­i­ly col­laged and gar­ish Isling­ton flat where Hal­li­well struck the play­wright on the head with a ham­mer nine times over before over­dos­ing on sleep­ing tablets. From this point for­ward, the film takes a more or less chrono­log­i­cal jour­ney from young John Orton’s aspi­ra­tions to be an actor, to meet­ing Hal­li­well at RADA, to his pro­lif­ic but short-lived career as a play­wright. The flash­backs are inter­ject­ed by the accounts of Orton’s agent Peg­gy Ram­say (Vanes­sa Red­grave) and his biog­ra­ph­er John Lahr (Wal­lace Shawn) as the pair attempt to assem­ble the colour­ful col­lage that was Joe Orton’s life.

Vaness­sa Red­grave is fan­tas­tic as the shrewd and non-judge­men­tal agent who sees great promise in John Orton’s work, rev­el­ling in the fact that he has served some time in prison (“excel­lent, the papers love all that”) and not hold­ing back on her opin­ion of his giv­en name. ​“It sounds too much like John Osborne. Are you attached to John as a name? No? Try to think of anoth­er one dear”. Julie Wal­ters also makes the briefest of com­ic turns as Orton’s moth­er who gets her­self into a con­sid­er­able flap when a coun­cil offi­cial comes to the fam­i­ly home to com­mend Joe on his act­ing prowess. ​“This is my hus­band, ignore him”, she says by way of intro­duc­ing the pair.

Moli­na is superb as Hal­li­well, man­ag­ing to not only depict a man grad­u­al­ly unrav­el­ling from intel­li­gent and dig­ni­fied to fren­zied and para­noid but to cast him in a sym­pa­thet­ic light. Know­ing as we do from the film’s open­ing scene that Hal­li­well blud­geons Joe Orton to death, it is cred­it to Moli­na that he man­ages to depict both his wors­en­ing neu­ro­sis and jeal­ousy along­side a sweet, lov­ing and at times pitiable per­sona. It answers the ques­tion that many posed at the time of Orton’s death; why was this charis­mat­ic high-fly­er with a man who was a com­plete bag of nerves? When you see the pair togeth­er, it just makes sense.

Equal­ly superb is Old­man, who not only nails Orton’s voice and man­ner­isms but imbues the char­ac­ter with an anar­chic spir­it which those clos­est to Orton remem­ber fond­ly. Oldman’s facial expres­sions do all the talk­ing in an era where the gay com­mu­ni­ty had to rely on dis­crete ges­tures and he occa­sion­al­ly flash­es the utter­ly charm­ing and slight­ly smug smirk of a man who knows that every­one is falling at his feet. That said, there is nev­er any doubt that he con­tin­ues to love boyfriend Ken­neth Hal­li­well, han­dling his symp­toms with a dose of tough love and gen­uine affec­tion that makes the rela­tion­ship com­plete­ly believ­able from both sides.

Prick Up Your Ears is not only a huge­ly enter­tain­ing tragi­com­e­dy but an inter­est­ing look at the social cli­mate in the 1960s, offer­ing an intro­duc­tion into the world of ​‘cot­tag­ing’, anony­mous sex in pub­lic toi­lets, and depict­ing a pal­pa­ble fear amongst the gay com­mu­ni­ty that the police are relent­less­ly watch­ing. In many ways it is the sto­ry of Halliwell’s grow­ing sense of dejec­tion, in oth­ers it is a cel­e­bra­tion of London’s hid­den homo­sex­u­al com­mu­ni­ty and the life of one man who thrived in it.

Prick Up Your Ears is in cin­e­mas from 4 August cour­tesy of Park Cir­cus. Find out where the film is screen­ing near you.