SOURCE: Greenberg, Joel. “Joe Orton: A High Comedy of Bad Manners.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 15, no. 2 (spring 2001): 133-44.

In the following essay, Greenberg presents an overview of several Orton plays, emphasizing the comedic shock value of Orton's style.

Joe Orton, dubbed ‘the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State Gentility’ by critic Ronald Bryden, established a new kind of theatre with just three full-length plays and less than a half dozen one-act and radio plays. That so modest a body of work altered the possibilities of stage comedy is remarkable, but that the playwright spent only three years of his life, the last three years (1964-67), in his pursuit of and mastery over a unique voice is nothing short of extraordinary.

Orton was an exemplary student, whose education came not from formal training but from his inexhaustible appetite for reading, listening to radio drama, attending theatre and eavesdropping...