Anyone going to see London Classic Theatre’s production of What the Butler Saw unfamiliar with the play and thinking they will be seeing a conventional farce, will have their preconceptions immediately challenged when entering the auditorium.
Holly Smith as Mrs Prentice and Alex Cardall as Nicholas Beckett in What The Butler Saw | Photo © Sheila Burnett
On display is the striking surreal set, stunningly designed by Bek Palmer – a surreal fusion of psychiatrist’s office and dreamscape, with splashes of Magritte, Escher and de Chirico dominating the stage, all presided over by a giant hand straight out of Monty Python.
Those who like their farces safe and cosy will do best to take this as a premonition.
In truth, this is a play that will divide audiences. Yes, it has many farce staples – married couples hiding affairs, confused coppers, men in dresses and much running in and out of doors – but it also features repeated jokes about rape, childhood incest and “white Golliwogs”. Yes, really.
It’s fair to say that, however daring (and therefore hilarious) such subjects were seen at the time of the play’s premiere at the end of the Swinging Sixties, they provoked very little laughter in the audience at this week’s press night.
Enfant terrible Joe Orton was highly celebrated at the time for pushing the limits of taste, but these days it’s hard to see jokes on such subjects as entertaining.
That’s not to say there isn’t much to enjoy in the production.
Director Michael Cabot (also the company’s founder and artistic director) wisely keeps the pace manic, with hardly a breath between lines, and the increasingly fraught chases and sequences are timed perfectly.
Performances are appropriately increasingly unhinged as the misunderstandings stack up; John Dorney’s Dr Prentice is louche and in control for all of ten minutes before despair sets in, whilst Holly Smith’s elegantly composed poise likewise crumbles into shrieks by the end.
Leading the charge though is Jack Lord as the Dr Rance, who comes across like Alexander Armstrong in a lab coat; his highly confident performance wrings all the humour out of his pomposity, lasciviousness and increasing derangement as the mayhem swirls about.
This is a slick production of a play which is (and feels) 55 years old. Because of the extreme subject matter of much of its humour, however, it is for a very broadminded audience.
For those who may be expecting an Alan Ayckbourn or The Play That Goes Wrong – well, you have been warned.
What the Butler Saw is showing at Theatre Royal Bath until 30th May. Box office: 01225 448844.
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Reviewer: Steve Huggins
