Matt Lucas Pricks Up His Ears

Matt Lucas will be the latest celeb to take on a West End role, as Simon Bent’s Prick Up Your Ears is staged at the Comedy Theatre in September. Lucas will play Kenneth Halliwell, who was the lover of playwright Joe Orton - and also his murderer. After Orton achieved success with great plays Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Loot, Halliwell bludgeoned him to death in 1967 in the flat they shared and then killed himself by overdosing on drugs.

This sounds quite shocking, especially as these events occurred in 1967, but right up my street. I love dramatisations of historical events, even if it does involve killing with a blunt object, (I know… this is not the nicest of subjects). But the role of Halliwell certainly sounds like a change of image for Lucas who is probably better known as his character Dafydd from Little Britain (the only gay in the village).

Except maybe it’s not. Prick Up Your Ears is actually quite funny, with the exception of its rather macabre outcome. The characters of Orton and Halliwell attempt to cope with the stifling claustrophobia of their one room flat in Islington by throwing caustic comments at each other, providing a very dark, but humorous domestic combat that drips with sharp wit. The story is told from Halliwell’s perspective and his increasing dissatisfaction as Orton’s career takes off, leaving Halliwell relegated to life out of the limelight. Apparently his role as housewife eventually pushed Halliwell over the edge….however, I still have to use some imagination to envision Matt Lucas, creator of some of the funniest visual characters on television, morphing into a jealous killer. I’m half expecting him to appear on stage in a latex suit with a rum and coke in his hand!