SOURCE: Simon, John. “Beelzebubee.” New York 22, no. 50 (18 December 1989): 105-07.

In the following excerpt from a review of several plays, Simon presents an unfavorable assessment of the stage version of Up against It.

Up Against It was a screenplay, the last work of Joe Orton before his lover murdered him and killed himself. The producer who bought it for a pretty penny did not make the movie (initially intended for the Beatles); whether this was because the scandal proved too great or the script too puny I cannot say. Judging from the musical Tom Ross and Todd Rundgren have fashioned from it, whatever the screenplay may be like, its sleep should not have been disturbed.

It would be hopeless to try to summarize the scattershot plot. It is a chase story involving a young hero and his two mates in the England (sort of) of the sixties. There is...