Diary of a Somebody review: ‘Story of murdered gay playwright Joe Orton still shocks and scandalises’

Words: Simon Button; Images: Brittain Photography

Branded “perversely enjoyable” when it first played at the National Theatre in 1986, the latest production of John Lahr’s Diary of a Somebody comes with a warning that it contains some upsetting scenes.

Taken from the warts-and-all-diaries of gay writer Joe Orton, the show at the intimate Seven Dials Playhouse is prefaced with another heads-up: That attitudes contained herein were held by Orton and many of his contemporaries and, retained for historical accuracy, don’t represent the current attitudes of the show’s producers or the theatre in which it is receiving its first London revival in more than 35 years.

If all this smacks of political correctness gone mad, I’m sure Orton himself – a working-class provocateur playwright and sexual adventurer – would have enjoyed knowing his story might still shock and scandalise more than five decades after his too-soon death.

And director Nico Rao Pimparé doesn’t shy away from the grit and grimness of a tale that starts with Joe meeting and moving in with middle-class artist Kenneth Halliwell and ends – SPOILER ALERT – just before Halliwell, driven to despair by Orton’s promiscuity and rising celebrity, bashes his head in, then takes his own life.

George Kemp and Ryan Rajan Mal (Image: Brittain Photography)

That’s actually not much of a spoiler, given how Orton’s demise in 1967 when he was just 34 years old is embedded in queer history and was dramatised twenty years later in Stephen Frears’ film Prick Up Your Ears, which screenwriter Alan Bennett based on Lahr’s biography of the same name as well as on the diaries that formed the basis of Diary of a Somebody the previous year.

The film, starring Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina, had a wider focus whilst the play hones in on the last eight months of Orton’s life in a West London flat that is more battleground than love nest. In the first act you wonder why this odd couple are even together, but then in the second half they’re holidaying in Tangiers and their poolside banter is funny and affectionate, offering a glimpse of a fun, loving relationship before Halliwell’s rage sets in again.

George Kemp and Ryan Rajan Mal (Image: Brittain Photography)

There are lots of bitchy quips that would have the PC police up in arms if they were uttered in a contemporary setting and a dark sense of foreboding that’s undercut whenever Carry On star Kenneth Williams (a close friend of the couple’s) pops in with a bon mot or two.

The Williams impersonation is actually not as spot-on as it should be and one member of the cast, who I won’t name and shame, fluffed so many of his lines I got nervous every time he appeared. But Toby Osmond is touchingly tortured as Halliwell and George Kemp pulls off a delicate balancing act as Orton. He’s a rogue but loveable with it in a play that offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a flawed icon.

Rating: 4/5

Diary of a Somebody is at Seven Dials Playhouse until April 30th. For great deals on tickets and shows click here.