SOURCE: Stirling, Grant. “Ortonesque/Carnivalesque: The Grotesque Realism of Joe Orton.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 11, no. 2 (spring 1997): 41-63.

In the following essay, Stirling applies theoretical standards drawn by Mikhail Bakhtin about the plays of Rabelais to those of Orton; while Orton's philosophy is more grim than Rabelais's, he uses the same kind of “grotesque realism” and carnival-like scenarios to comment on the world as he sees it, making his plays more than simply farcical.

[Joe Orton's] nonconformity was carried to a much greater extent than that of Shakespeare or Cervantes, who merely disobeyed the narrow classical forms. [Orton's] images have a certain undestroyable nonofficial nature. No dogma, no authoritarianism, no narrow-minded seriousness can coexist with [Ortonesque] images; these images are opposed to all that is finished and polished, to all pomposity, to every ready-made solution in the sphere of thought and world outlook.¹

Although Mikhail Bakhtin...