What the Butler Saw

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Comedy Opened 24 August 2005, Closed 22 October 2005

Criterion Theatre Piccadilly Circus, London

"An icon of modern drama" The Guardian

In Joe Orton's classic farce What The Butler Saw a psychiatric clinic becomes a world of carnivalesque chaos when rampant libidos, mistaken identities, undressing and cross dressing add layer upon layer of michievous confusion to this farcical masterpiece. What the Butler Saw is directed by David Grindley and comes into London's West End following a season at The Hampstead Theatre with all the cast reprising their roles - Geoff Breton, Jonathan Coy, Huw Higginson, Belinda Lang, Joanna Page and Malcolm Sinclair.

"A truly classic sex farce that keps up an almost relentless stream of great gags... a summer treat" The Sunday Express

"Like a retired colonel in a negligee, Joe Orton's final filthy farce still manages to generate a transgressive frisson despite its age... This robust revival vigorously promotes a sense of cheery perversion as Orton upends the psychosexual toy box. The able cast run around a private psychiatric clinic in a frenzy and their underwear, and as the door-slamming farce spirals wildly, they keep their one-liners as tight as their Y-fronts... This production tunes into a play that remains as startling as early colour television in a black-and-white world." The Sunday Times

"You'd be mad to miss it" The Daily Mail

"David Grindley's workaday production of What the Butler Saw. Times have changed since 1969, and nowadays we're bombarded with sex in all its infinite variety. So what use to us is a play that uses Sixties England's proscriptive sexual culture as a trigger for a farce about madness and sanity? The answer, on this showing, is: not a great deal... There's still some fun to be had here, mainly thanks to Malcolm Sinclair's terrific Rance, a Ronnie Barker-ish brigadier in a lab-coat, prescribing ethical fundamentalism in rueful clipped consonants... But the question remains: Given psychosis, sex and Orton as his ingredients, however did Grindley end up with such a cosy confection? To do so is a kind of madness." The Observer

"I urge all those theatregoers who have never seen this classic play to catch up with it in this form - sheer pleasure" The Financial Times

"I find it hard to get very excited about a wanton bellboy disguised in a mini-dress and a load more cross-dressing. Still, Orton manages the escalating confusion with panache and combines cheap gags with great surreal flourishes of Wildean eloquence. Grindley's period production is typically fine-tuned and perfectly paced, except for a self-conscious performance from Geoff Breton as the bellboy. Belinda Lang and Jonathan Coy as the Prentices and Malcolm Sinclair as Rance are on splendid comic form, with an air of terse respectability which they never let drop even as the underwear starts flying." The Independent on Sunday

"Ingenious, gleefully anarchic - very funny" The Independent

"What The Butler Saw by Joe Orton, first performed in 1969 to much outrage and controversy, has been revived... The question is, has it survived?... [David Grindley] clearly believes that Orton's script is clever and quick enough to counteract the lack of outrage or controversy that will be caused by his no-longer shocking thoughts on the police, psychiatry or the Sexual Offences Act... so Grindley sticks limpet-like to the original. He even has the cast talking in farce voices, as if in an episode of Bless This House. The set, however, is brilliant in its authenticity." The Sunday Telegraph