Breakthrough Orton began writing plays in 1959 with
Fred and Madge;
The Visitors followed two years later. In 1963, the BBC paid £65 for the radio play
The Ruffian on the Stair, broadcast on 31 August 1964. It was substantially rewritten for the stage in 1966. He had completed
Entertaining Mr Sloane by the time
Ruffian was broadcast. He sent a copy to theatre agent
Peggy Ramsay in December 1963. It premiered at the
New Arts Theatre in Westminster 6 May 1964, produced by
Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage.
The Times described it as making "the blood boil more than any other British play in the last 10 years".
Entertaining Mr Sloane lost money in its three-week run, but critical praise from playwright
Terence Rattigan, who invested £3,000 in it, ensured its survival. The play was transferred to
Wyndham's Theatre in the
West End at the end of June and to the
Queen's Theatre in October.
Sloane tied for first in the
Variety Critics' Poll for Best New Play and Orton came second for Most Promising Playwright. Within a year,
Sloane was performed in New York, Spain, Israel, and Australia as well as made into
a film (after Orton's death) and a television play.
Loot Orton's next performed work was
Loot. The first draft was written from June to October 1964 and was called
Funeral Games, a title Orton dropped at Halliwell's suggestion but later reused. The play is a wild parody of
detective fiction, adding the
blackest farce and jabs at established ideas on death, the police, religion, and justice. Orton offered the play to Codron in October 1964 and it underwent sweeping rewrites before it was judged fit for the West End. Codron had manoeuvred Orton into meeting his colleague
Kenneth Williams in August 1964. Orton reworked
Loot with Williams in mind for Truscott. His other inspiration for the role was DS
Harold Challenor. With the success of
Sloane,
Loot was hurried into
pre-production despite its flaws. Rehearsals began in January 1965, with plans for a six-week tour culminating in a West End debut. The play opened in
Cambridge on 1 February to scathing reviews. Orton, disagreeing with director
Peter Wood over the plot, produced 133 pages of new material to replace, or add to, the original 90. But the play received poor reviews in
Brighton,
Oxford,
Bournemouth,
Manchester, and finally
Wimbledon in mid-March. Discouraged, Orton and Halliwell went on an 80-day holiday in Tangiers. In January 1966,
Loot was revived, with
Oscar Lewenstein taking up an option. Before his production, it had a short run (11–23 April) at the
University Theatre, Manchester. Orton's growing experience led him to cut over 600 lines, raising the tempo and improving the characters' interactions. Directed by
Braham Murray, the play garnered more favourable reviews. Lewenstein put the London production in a "sort of Off-West End theatre," the
Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre in
Bloomsbury, under the direction of
Charles Marowitz. Orton clashed with Marowitz, although the additional cuts further improved the play. This production was first staged in London on 27 September 1966, to rave reviews.
Ronald Bryden in
The Observer asserted that it had "established Orton's niche in English drama".
Loot moved to the
Criterion Theatre in November where it ran for 342 performances. This time it won several awards, and Orton sold the film rights for £25,000.
Loot, when performed on Broadway in 1968, repeated the failure of
Sloane, and the film version of the play was not a success when it surfaced in 1970.
Later works Over the next ten months, he revised
The Ruffian on the Stair and
The Erpingham Camp for the stage as a double called
Crimes of Passion, wrote
Funeral Games, the screenplay
Up Against It for
the Beatles, and his final full-length play,
What the Butler Saw.
The Erpingham Camp, Orton's take on
The Bacchae, written through mid-1965 and offered to
Associated-Rediffusion in October of that year, was broadcast on 27 June 1966 as the "pride" segment in their series
Seven Deadly Sins.
The Good and Faithful Servant was a transitional work for Orton. A one-act television play, it was completed by June 1964 but first broadcast by Associated-Rediffusion on 6 April 1967, representing "faith" in the series
Seven Deadly Virtues. Orton rewrote
Funeral Games four times from July to November 1966. Also intended for
The Seven Deadly Virtues, it dealt with
charity – Christian charity – in a confusion of adultery and murder. Rediffusion did not use the play; instead, it was made as one of the first productions of the new ITV company
Yorkshire Television, and broadcast posthumously in the
Playhouse series on 26 August 1968, five weeks after an adaptation of
Mr Sloane. In March 1967, Orton and Halliwell had intended another extended holiday in
Libya, but they returned home after one day because the only hotel accommodation they could find was a boat that had been converted into a hotel/nightclub. They spent May and June holidaying in
Tangier, Morocco, where they frequently engaged in sex with teenage boys. ==Murder==