Despite sharing the same title as a previous film and biography of Joe Orton, Prick Up Your Ears is a new play which is 'inspired' by John Lahr's biography of the playwright.

It's a great story, an incredible gay melodrama which - If it wasn't for the fact it actually happened - would be seen as a homosexual plagiarising of Judy Garland's finest hour in A Star is Born. An intelligent older sophisticate nurtures the talent of his younger lover, only to find the lover eclipsing him in fame and fortune as he descends into drug-induced oblivion.

The play opens in the fairly squalid flat shared by Kenneth Halliwell (Matt Lucas) and Joe Orton (Chris New). This is before Joe has had his first taste of success and the two of them fill their time recording salacious versions of genteel radio dramas for their own amusement or writing equally salacious blurbs which they then pasted onto popular novels.

Although they never wrote a play together, their defacing-library-books oeurvre contained a spark of hysterical, wayward genius. It's impossible to feel anything but envy for the late 60s reader perusing a Dorothy L. Sayers only to find that it's plot hinged on PC Brenda Coolidge and her predilection for assaulting young girls with seven-inch phalluses.

This shows Joe and Kenneth at their happiest - Joe doing bits of writing on the sly while the two of them amused themselves with the guileless anarchy of small kids.

Occasionally their hijinks are interrupted by their landlady Mrs Corden (Gwen Taylor) a suitably Ortonesque creation who, on being privy to their supper plans, will comment "Tinned salmon? You are coming up in the world."

A letter from the BBC - delivered by Mrs Corden like a royal proclamation - heralds the start of a shift in their relationship. The letter confirms that the BBC wants to broadcast one of Orton's plays. Up until this point Halliwell believed that they were a writing team, but the letter is addressed solely to Orton which seems fair given that he wrote the play.

Halliwell tries his best to be happy for Orton, but he doesn't try that hard or, as far as the play shows, for very long. When Orton has a disastrous tour of Loot, Halliwell gleefully regales Mrs Corden with some of the most damning quotes which he's learned by heart.

When a temporarily cowed Orton suggests that the next play he writes he'll simply stash in some draw, Halliwell replies,  "why bother to write at all" and then professes his admiration for writers like Rimbaud who "just stopped writing".

One of the selling points of this production is the alleged rehabilitation of Halliwell. But, as far as I could tell, he's was portrayed as a man genuinely upset by his lover's success in both work and the pursuit of men in public lavatories. Of course it's true that both Orton's diaries and Lahr's biography don't give a particularly sympathetic picture of Halliwell - but maybe this play will help settle the debate by finding that Halliwell wasn't a particularly sympathetic character.

The play is a fine telling of the Orton/Halliwell story which is part psychological drama, part broad comedy, and never less than compelling.

There's no two ways about it - Chris New gives an truly outstanding performance as Orton. He's as sexy as he is mischievous which, if anything, make you feel a little more understanding of Halliwell's plight - who wouldn't feel insanely jealous living with someone possessed of that much charisma and talent.

Lucas is perfectly acceptable as Halliwell, but doesn't have the range or depth to really bring the man to life.

Taylor's Mrs Corden is a great comic turn - perhaps she represents a compendium of all Orton's female characters - and although she's played on one note, it's pitch perfect.

Prick Up Your Ears is a finely written, occasionally brilliantly acted, piece of theatre. It might not be the apologia for Halliwell that the cast might believe it is, but it certainly doesn't demonise him the way many critics think the Lahr biography does. But, considering how the story ends, Halliwell was never going to make a very convincing hero.

Prick Up You Ears plays till Saturday: For tickets: www.ambassadortickets.com/1348/664/Brighton/Theatre-Royal-Brighton/Prick-Up-Your-Ears

or call 0844 871 7627