Review of Prick Up Your Ears

The life and death of devilish homosexual British playwright Joe Orton who, in 1964, had his first play "Entertaining Mr. Sloan" produced on the London stage after years of flailing about. Orton's open-ended relationship with his flatmate/lover, the hulking, desperate Kenneth Halliwell, is often brilliantly observed by director Stephen Frears, who manages to make this masochistic relationship funny and creepy at the same time. Gary Oldman's performance as Orton is prankish, malicious and enormously amusing; his prodding of Halliwell is excruciating, yet one can see how much it turns Orton on. Alfred Molina's Halliwell is really Orton's flip-side: self-conscious, needy and hopeless, he begins as Orton's writing partner but quickly degenerates into a lackey, his morose despair becoming more anxious and impenetrable. A finely-tuned, intentionally callow, brightly-colored bauble of immoral behavior. Terrific supporting cast includes Vanessa Redgrave looking marvelous as a literary agent with a soft purr of a voice. **1/2 from ****