What The
Butler Saw

“There are a lot of laughs and some dynamite moments in the "Butler" playing at Marin Theatre Company... "Butler" is a masterfully constructed farce...Glazer's cast and stagings rise to the challenge and Orton's savage satire shows its teeth.”

“The laughs come fast and furious . . . clever quips zip by as quickly as the satirical slaps.”

“It's just delicious.”

“The laughs, which come often, are nearly as big as Winston Churchill's humbling manhood.”

“As farces go, the current production at the Marin Theatre Company, is one of the goofiest I've seen.”

“The play’s action ratchets into a snarl of disguises, overdoses, gunfire and strait jackets, then ties it all up – even through lockdown -- with an entirely unexpected, delightful finish. Marin Theatre Company has pulled in a stageload of big talent. ”

“Smartly directed by Amy Glazer, this sex farce comes off like gangbusters (as do secretary Geraldine Barley's—played by Cat Walleck—bra and panties). ”

“Hilarious, outrageous . . . It dazzles! . . . toying with words as if they were firecrackers.”

When the Inmates Run the Asylum
by Margot Melcon

Joe Orton

Farce relies on the law of momentum. It is the combination of unlikely and increasingly extravagant situations piled on top of one another with absurd behavior, improbable choices, and often mistaken identity building to a frantic climax, and typically ending with a radical plot twist and a convenient acceptance of what had just happened as perfectly understandable. In short, farce is life, twisted and speeded up to the point of insanity.

That playwright Joe Orton set his infamous farce, What the Butler Saw, in a psychiatrist’s office in an mental institution only adds a layer of madness to an already raving play. In a mental ward, the characters would rightly act a little crazy but in Orton’s carefully and hilariously crafted world, it is the doctor who behaves the most erratically, and in the end it’s not clear exactly who ought to be in the straight jacket.

Sufficient Frenzy
The title What the Butler Saw refers to the boardwalk peep-shows once common in polite English society. Under the guise of modesty, buttoned-up Brits were allowed to get kinky without getting their hands dirty. In the play, the audience is the unexpected voyeur, peering in as the sex habits of the upper, middle, and lower classes collide at breakneck speed. “I hope I can keep up sufficient frenzy to the end of play,” remarked Orton in his diary upon completion of the first half of the Butler, acknowledging the vital importance of the pace of the play to its success.

Butler begins with a harmless lie, followed by a shameless lie, which then leads to a cover up that escalates into complete mayhem and total chaos. The characters behave badly but are in a world so bent there is no other reasonable way to act. In the course of the play, Orton manages to call equally to task society, government, sexuality, psychiatry, marriage, and manners.

Fame and Infamy
Born in 1933 in Leicester, Orton escaped the quiet simplicity of his parents and his hometown for a life of outrageousness in London. While studying acting (a short-lived plan), he met Kenneth Halliwell, a man 7 years his senior who became his lover, mentor, and collaborator. Halliwell and Orton lived together for fifteen years, working closely as co-authors on several novels and early plays.

In his youth, one of Orton’s favorite amusements was writing scathing critiques of his own work under the name and persona of the stuffy and proper Edna Welthorpe (Mrs), and others. It was a pleasure to quietly trick and tease sophisticated theatergoers into ruthlessly laughing at their own ridiculous lives. His delight in turning high art into low and vice versa extended to defacing public library books with Halliwell, collaging and exchanging pictures and plates to create new and laughable covers to classic works of literature—a stunt which landed them both in jail for six months.

Orton eventually surpassed Halliwell as a writer in both talent and ambition with his ease and assured impertinence. In addition to shorter pieces written for radio and television, Orton is best known for his full-length plays, Entertaining Mr. Sloan and Loot. In late 1967, at the time of the completion What the Butler Saw, he was considered one of the most promising young writers for the theater.

Orton’s promise never had a chance to be fulfilled. On August 9, 1967, resulting from a combination of jealousy, deep depression, and frustration at being left behind by his younger, charismatic, more talented lover, Kenneth Halliwell bashed Orton’s head in with a hammer before committing suicide in their small, spare London flat.

Legacy
For years, the infamy of Orton’s death surpassed the acclaim of his work. The first production of What the Butler Saw was not well received in the polite English society it poked fun at. When it was posthumously first produced in 1969 it was denounced, due in large part to a failure of the original production rather than the play. Cries of “Filth!” shot down from the gallery as the actors heroically wound their way through the play. The press was contemptuous. Elderly ladies stomped on their playbills in protest.

Had Orton been alive, his input on the production might have made a difference. The script was cut for the English premiere to lessen the blow of some of the more offensive material, and was completely butchered when it was premiered in America in 1970. In subsequent productions of the play, which have reverted a more pure version of Orton’s text, the wit, irreverence, and humor of What the Butler Saw has survived. With its pistol-shot dialogue, social norms abandoned, and hilariously unexpected ending, it is now considered one of the finest examples of farce ever written.