The God of Wine at NYTW

Joe Orton in front of a collage created by Kenneth Halliwell.

Yesterday I did a reading of a new play loosely based on the lives of playwright Joe Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell.  The New York Theater Workshop produced the reading of The God of Wine, written by Clarence Coo, conceived and directed by Kareem Fahmy.  In his prolific and provocative (if short) career, Joe Orton turned the London theater world upside down with his violent, darkly comedic plays (Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Loot, and What the Butler Saw). Orton is perhaps as famous for his death, killed with a hammer by his lover Kenneth Halliwell, who subsequently committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of pills. The complicated artistic and romantic entanglements of these two men provided the source material for The God of Wine. I played Frank, the a character based on Kenneth.