The idea to perform a play from each decade of the company's existence as a celebration of our 40th anniversary has allowed us to do what we do best, present exciting and challenging theatre. I remember arguing with companion who wanted to walk out on the student performance that we were attending and my resisting vehemently because a friend of mine was in the cast. Audiences were both shocked and appalled at the overt sexual references and lack of respect for authority and morality. Not even Foley's folly can quite suppress Orton's epigrammatic wit, and one or two of the performers retain a visible humanity: principally Georgia Moffett as the secretary arbitrarily classified as insane and Jason Thorpe as a dogged cop strangely gratified to be bundled into a dress. Joe Orton's final play, unrevised at the time of his death in 1967, is a hard one to get right, since it combines manic farce with non-stop social commentary.

Joe Orton Biography | Author of What the Butler Saw Joe Orton Biography | Author of What the Butler Saw

Actually it's more prophetic than George Orwell, a dire warning of the perils of scientific classification gone as mad as the psychiatrist who tries to impose them . What follows is a hilarious spectacle of disintegration; normality crack and the characters descent into mental, physical and sexual confusion. Some of the fast paced mechanics of it as a farce are well done but the first act especially reads more to me like a misogynistic horror play than a comedy.Joe Orton's last play, What the Butler Saw, will live to be accepted as a comedy classic of English literature" (Sunday Telegraph) The chase is on in this breakneck comedy of licensed insanity, from the moment when Dr Prentice, a psychoanalyst interviewing a prospective secretary, instructs her to undress. His performance brilliantly illustrated the doctor's improbable dilemmas of incrimination and mistaken identity. If you find yourself able to ignore that, the dialogue and action are very witty and accomplished, and the whole thing is designed to be outrageous. The action, set in a psychiatric clinic, starts with Dr Prentice's failed seduction of his prospective secretary.

Butler Saw by Joe Orton | Goodreads What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton | Goodreads

The last of these - What The Butler Saw - is The Bench's latest performance and generally it's fine stuff. It’s very uncomfortable and I’m unsure on wether Joe Orton had a lack of understanding of rape, had a disregard for the effects of rape or was actually pointing out the absurdity in which rape victims would be treated and would treat themselves especially in that era.Prentice explains that this is Nicholas Beckett, a boy who raped her in a nearby hotel, and he’s blackmailing her. Prentice sees the locket and says it’s one she lost during a brief encounter in a hotel before she got married.

What The Butler Saw - Bloomsbury Publishing

Someone’s review said it reads more like “a misogynist horror play” which is exactly how I will now describe it. I was therefore delighted that the Bench chose to select this play as their representative of the 1960s era and after a year of powerful drama it's nice for us to let our hair down a little and present you with a great slice of entertainment that enables us to finish our 40th anniversary year in a celebratory manner. Rance looks around the rest of the clinic, deciding at the end of the play that there’s only one thing he can do—turn the things he’s seeing into a book.I saw it performed posthumously on stage just after the author had been bludgeoned to death by someone to whom he was so grateful that he could not abandon even when his friend had turned sour and finally murderous from envy and spite. Joe Orton was nothing if not candid but never 'smutty', and for those who knew him an unselfconscious charmer on account of it and, in a way, for his boyish innocence and the sincere fastidiousness of his writing' when the respectable middle classes were tittering naughtily over the really smutty innuendos of the endlessly repeated 'Carry On' cinematic series. He wrote his only novel: posthumously published as Head to Toe, in 1959, and had his writing accepted soon afterward. Maybe the too-neat bow tie of the end is more realistic or at least so ridiculous that it works as satire. These later chapters, whilst being a frank and open account of his life, are also well-crafted literary works.