I witnessed a mildly Ortonesque moment at the Seven Dials Playhouse the other night. The theatre has recently rebranded the men’s and women’s toilets as “gender-neutral”, meaning that punters of both sexes are invited to play a little game if they wish to relieve themselves. The two doors bear identical labels, but one leads to a cramped and pungent cubbyhole with urinals next to the sinks, whereas the other leads to a spacious and relatively luxurious area complete with individual cubicles. It’s a variation on the old “Monty Hall Problem”. Audience members must pick a door and take their chances, and those who guess wisely are rewarded with a more pleasant experience.
Minutes before the show was due to begin, a flustered woman emerged from one of these doors exclaiming angrily that there were “men pissing in front of everyone”. Given that the show we were about to watch was Diary of a Somebody, John Lahr’s 1986 adaptation of Joe Orton’s diaries, I couldn’t help but wonder who Orton’s targets might be in the context today’s eternally baffling culture wars. Would it be the kind of woman who was clearly upset at having to wash her hands in full view of male genitalia, or would it be the authorities at the theatre who expect her to do so and would presumably brand her a “transphobe” or a “bigot” should she complain?
This revival of Diary of a Somebody includes a running joke delivered by Mrs Edna Welthorpe, an alter-ego of Orton who would write to the press and to theatres in the late Sixties to complain about his plays. She emerges from time to time at a window on the upstage wall, a kind of choric figure expostulating on the evils of our hero. Her words are lifted verbatim from the letters that Orton dispatched under her name. For instance, her letter to the Telegraph described Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964) as an “endless parade of mental and physical perversion”.
Such satire feels more relevant than ever when one considers how the new puritans of “Critical Social Justice” often give the impression of emulating Mrs Edna Welthorpe, with all their talk of how libraries ought to be “decolonised”, their pruning of supposedly offensive comedy shows on streaming services, and their attacks on “problematic” representations in art and literature. In this, Orton had an advantage over the satirists of our time. While he was lauded for lampooning the establishment and breaking taboos, writers who do so today are likely to be chastised by critics and the doyens of the industry for failing to toe the line.
Consider the responses to the West End revival of Jez Butterworth’s award-winning Jerusalem. “Should the play be revived?” writes playwright Bea Roberts. “I’m not sure. I read the script again recently and there’s a lot that feels dated: the laddish chat about ‘birds’ and the racial references… I understand it’s a safe bet for producers, this big, much-loved hit — and I loved it too. But at a time when theatre is grappling with questions of diversity and representation after Black Lives Matter, and when we’re seeing the rise of nationalism post-Brexit, doing a play about defending the homeland and Englishness seems ill-judged.”
Roberts is far from alone in her belief that it is the responsibility of the dramatist to reinforce voguish and ephemeral trends. It seems unlikely that a work as genuinely subversive as Orton’s What the Butler Saw (1967) would ever be commissioned by a major theatre in the current climate. Early drafts would require a thorough going-over by a “sensitivity reader”, and doubtless a director with concerns about how theatrical productions ought to send the “correct message” would mangle whatever glimmers of genius remained.
I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. I have spoken to actors who have found that valuable rehearsal time is often now occupied with interrogating the morality behind the texts, and how the first session begins with each cast member declaring their preferred pronouns. Many avid theatregoers have been turned off because so many productions feel more like sermons than works of art. Critics in the mainstream press are now regularly assessing drama on the putative “message” of the piece, or whether or not they approve of the way in which characters are represented. The star-rating system has always been fatuous, but is especially so if marks are docked for insufficiently diverse casting.
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