RETROSPECTIVE: Desire, criminality, & hope in Prick Up Your Ears & Victim

2017 marks fifty years since the Sexual Offences Act was introduced in the UK, which led to the partial decriminalization of male homosexuality.

It’s also, coincidentally, fifty years since the death of taboo-busting gay playwright Joe Orton.

The BFI is currently presenting two separate seasons inspired by these events, Gross Indecency and Orton: Obscenities in Suburbia.…

The Lady in the Van is a chip (in the sugar) off the old Bennett block

 

For a man widely regarded as Britain’s best-loved living playwright, Alan Bennett sure does have a fixation with old ladies.

It’s a perception Bennett himself laments in The Lady in the Van. He claims he’d much rather be writing about spies.…