'We cannot all be masters, nor all masters/Cannot truly be follow'd': Joe Orton's Holiday Camp Bacchae – matters of class, genre and medium in The Erpingham Camp. Issue 2 (4th May 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bull, John
• Is Part Of: Studies in theatre and performance. Volume 37:Issue 2(2017)
• Page Start: 205
• Page End: 220
• Publication Date: 2017-05-04
• Subjects: Joe Orton -- Lindsay Anderson -- revolution -- anarchy -- television -- drama; Drama -- Periodicals; Theater -- Periodicals; Performing arts -- Periodicals; Acting -- Periodicals; Drama; Performing arts; Theater; Periodicals; 792.05
• DOI: 10.1080/14682761.2017.1303291
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-2761

Abstract

Abstract: Joe Orton had an equivocal attitude towards television, yet three of his seven plays first appeared there. His desire to be both popular and recognisably avant-garde was largely played out through the conflicting demands of television and the theatre. Director Lindsay Anderson, moving towards the realisation of If, a film which enacts a revolution in a British public school, suggested to Orton the possibility of a holiday camp Bacchae which became The Erpingham Camp, an enactment of a successful proletarian uprising in a British holiday camp. The location allowed Orton to satirise the minutiae of consumer culture, and construct the camp as an outpost of a Britain in no longer appropriately imperial guise. Earlier drafts of the play reveal a more anarchic vision, but reinforce the sense that, in his account of the 'revolution', Orton draws playfully from more truly theatrical epic sources – Shakespeare and Brecht, in particular. Orton found the quotation in my title in Othello and related it to The Erpingham Camp . It suggests a much more serious questioning of authority than the television play as screened did. By looking at its history, it is possible to reposition this play, and to re-open the debate about what Orton was moving towards theatrically.