Author Description

Two plays by Joe Orton, written before his breakthrough with Entertaining Mr Sloane. Fred and Madge, written in 1959 when he was 26, is Orton's very first play - and it shines with Orton's extraordinary way with one-liners and with dialogue that reeks of hilarious sexual and social innuendo. The Visitors, written in 1961, is the last play Orton wrote before his breakthrough. A thoroughly convincing exercise in slice-of-life realism set in a hospital where the dying Kemp is visited by his middle-aged daughter, while the nurses spend more time on in-fighting than on patient care.