SOURCE: Bain, Ted. Review of Up against It, by Joe Orton. Theatre Journal 47 (May 1995): 299-300.

In the following review of a 1994 Chicago production of Up Against It, Bain says that the former screenplay does not translate easily into the stage version.

His supposed depravity explicitly countered their good behavior, but for a few short months an odd collaboration was in the works. After Joe Orton wrote Up Against It in 1967 as a screenplay to showcase the Beatles, the script was returned with no explanation, though the inference might be that not all working-class artists have the same intentions in mind. Nonetheless, Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre has staged the text almost verbatim and punctuated it with original songs echoing early 1960s British rock. To an extent, the conflation of the Orton persona and that of the pop musician makes sense. Both feature the posturing of young men with a talent...