Prick Up Your Ears October 2, 2009

Matt Lucas plays Kenneth Halliwell alongside Chris New as playwright Joe Orton and Gwen Taylor as Mrs Corden, in Daniel Kramer’s production of Prick Up Your Ears, a new play by Simon Bent inspired exclusively by the John Lahr biography and the diaries of Joe Orton.

1962. Halliwell and Orton - RADA graduates, aspiring writers, and sometime lovers - plot their rightful place at the center of London’s literary scene whilst engaged in a secret crusade to 'improve' the local library books, and acting out their own versions of popular radio dramas... But Joe is about to become the most notorious comic playwright since Oscar Wilde, whilst Ken is reduced to sharing Joe’s success with their neighbour Mrs Corden over tea and battenburg.

This darkly funny and moving play imagines the sensational story behind Joe and Ken’s domestic life, trading well-trodden insults and hilarious put-downs like any old married couple.