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What the Butler Saw
"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. The plot of What the Butler Saw contains enough twists and turns, mishaps and changes of fortune, coincidences and lunatic logic to furnish three or four conventional comedies. But however the six characters in search of a plot lose the thread of the action - their wits or their clothes - their verbal self-possession never deserts them. Hailed as a modern comedy every bit as good as Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Orton's play is regularly produced, read and studied. "He is the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility" (Observer)
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
Joe Orton
46 books87 followersJohn Kingsley ("Joe") Orton was an English playwright. In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death in 1967, he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque is now used to refer to something characterised by a dark but farcical cynicism.
Joe Orton began to write plays in the early 1960s. He wrote his only novel: posthumously published as Head to Toe, in 1959, and had his writing accepted soon afterward. In 1963 the BBC paid £65 for the radio play The Ruffian on the Stair, broadcast on 31 August 1964. It was substantially rewritten for the stage in 1966.
Orton had completed Entertaining Mr. Sloane by the time Ruffian was broadcast. The play premiered on 6 May 1964 directed by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage. It lost money in its 3-week run, but critical praise from playwright Terence Rattigan, who invested £3,000 in it, ensured its survival. Sloane tied for first in the Variety Critics' Poll for "Best New Play" and Orton came second for "Most Promising Playwright." Within a year, Sloane was being performed in New York, Spain, Israel and Australia, as well as being made into a film and a television play.
Orton's next work was Loot, written between June and October 1964. The play is a wild parody of detective fiction, adding the blackest farce and jabs at established ideas on death, the police, religion, and justice. It underwent sweeping rewrites before it was judged fit for the West End. Codron had manoeuvred Orton into meeting his colleague Kenneth Williams in August 1964. Orton reworked Loot with Williams in mind for Truscott. His other inspiration for the role was DS Harold Challenor. The play opened to scathing reviews. Loot moved to the West End in November 1966, raising Orton's confidence to new heights while he was in the middle of writing What the Butler Saw. Loot went on to win several awards and firmly established Orton's fame. He sold the film rights for £25,000 although he was certain it would flop. It did, but Orton, still on an absolute high, proceeded over the next ten months to revise The Ruffian on the Stair and The Erpingham Camp for the stage as a double called Crimes of Passion; wrote Funeral Games; wrote the screenplay Up Against It for the Beatles; and worked on What the Butler Saw.
The Good and Faithful Servant was a transitional work for Orton. A one-act television play completed by June 1964 but first broadcast by Associated-Rediffusion on 6 April 1967. The Erpingham Camp, Orton's take on The Bacchae, written through mid-1965 and offered to Rediffusion in October of that year, was broadcast on 27 June 1966 as the 'pride' segment in their series Seven Deadly Sins.
Orton wrote Funeral Games from July to November 1966 for a 1967 Rediffusion series, The Seven Deadly Virtues, It dealt with charity--especially Christian charity—in a confusion of adultery and murder. Rediffusion did not use the play; instead, it was made as one of the first productions of the new ITV company Yorkshire Television, and broadcast on 26 August 1968.
On 9 August 1967, Orton's lover Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at his home in Islington, London, with a hammer and then committed suicide with an overdose of Nembutal tablets. Investigators determined that Halliwell died first, because Orton's body was still warm. Orton was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium, his coffin brought into the chapel to The Beatles song "A Day in the Life". Harold Pinter read the eulogy saying "He was a bloody marvellous writer."
In his hometown, Leicester, a new pedestrian concourse outside the Curve theatre's main entrance is named "Orton Square." John Lahr wrote a biography of Orton entitled Prick Up Your Ears in 1978. A 1987 film adaptation directed by Stephen Frears starred Gary Oldman as Orton and Alfred Molina as Halliwell. Alan Bennett wrote the screenplay.
Joe Orton began to write plays in the early 1960s. He wrote his only novel: posthumously published as Head to Toe, in 1959, and had his writing accepted soon afterward. In 1963 the BBC paid £65 for the radio play The Ruffian on the Stair, broadcast on 31 August 1964. It was substantially rewritten for the stage in 1966.
Orton had completed Entertaining Mr. Sloane by the time Ruffian was broadcast. The play premiered on 6 May 1964 directed by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage. It lost money in its 3-week run, but critical praise from playwright Terence Rattigan, who invested £3,000 in it, ensured its survival. Sloane tied for first in the Variety Critics' Poll for "Best New Play" and Orton came second for "Most Promising Playwright." Within a year, Sloane was being performed in New York, Spain, Israel and Australia, as well as being made into a film and a television play.
Orton's next work was Loot, written between June and October 1964. The play is a wild parody of detective fiction, adding the blackest farce and jabs at established ideas on death, the police, religion, and justice. It underwent sweeping rewrites before it was judged fit for the West End. Codron had manoeuvred Orton into meeting his colleague Kenneth Williams in August 1964. Orton reworked Loot with Williams in mind for Truscott. His other inspiration for the role was DS Harold Challenor. The play opened to scathing reviews. Loot moved to the West End in November 1966, raising Orton's confidence to new heights while he was in the middle of writing What the Butler Saw. Loot went on to win several awards and firmly established Orton's fame. He sold the film rights for £25,000 although he was certain it would flop. It did, but Orton, still on an absolute high, proceeded over the next ten months to revise The Ruffian on the Stair and The Erpingham Camp for the stage as a double called Crimes of Passion; wrote Funeral Games; wrote the screenplay Up Against It for the Beatles; and worked on What the Butler Saw.
The Good and Faithful Servant was a transitional work for Orton. A one-act television play completed by June 1964 but first broadcast by Associated-Rediffusion on 6 April 1967. The Erpingham Camp, Orton's take on The Bacchae, written through mid-1965 and offered to Rediffusion in October of that year, was broadcast on 27 June 1966 as the 'pride' segment in their series Seven Deadly Sins.
Orton wrote Funeral Games from July to November 1966 for a 1967 Rediffusion series, The Seven Deadly Virtues, It dealt with charity--especially Christian charity—in a confusion of adultery and murder. Rediffusion did not use the play; instead, it was made as one of the first productions of the new ITV company Yorkshire Television, and broadcast on 26 August 1968.
On 9 August 1967, Orton's lover Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at his home in Islington, London, with a hammer and then committed suicide with an overdose of Nembutal tablets. Investigators determined that Halliwell died first, because Orton's body was still warm. Orton was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium, his coffin brought into the chapel to The Beatles song "A Day in the Life". Harold Pinter read the eulogy saying "He was a bloody marvellous writer."
In his hometown, Leicester, a new pedestrian concourse outside the Curve theatre's main entrance is named "Orton Square." John Lahr wrote a biography of Orton entitled Prick Up Your Ears in 1978. A 1987 film adaptation directed by Stephen Frears starred Gary Oldman as Orton and Alfred Molina as Halliwell. Alan Bennett wrote the screenplay.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
March 6, 2021
A classic modern comedy, now considered a masterpiece...just as Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" is his best play and brought back to life the glittering stage comedy that had been dormant for 100 years after Sheridan. As with Wilde, Joe Orton exults in epigrams and paradoxes, along with a dangerous streak of "theatricalism." It has been said that Wilde found English comedy a corpse and left it a harlot. Orton takes this painted harlot and transforms her into royalty. (He was murdered in 1967 before he had a chance to see it performed).
With mistaken identity, disguise (which requires nudity onstage), sexual confusion and - final twist - the reuniting of twins separated at birth, Orton gives the sophisticated playgoer much to shudder over and more to be dazzled by. In the examination room at a private clinic, where madness and chaos reign, a young female secretary applies for a job with a psychiatrist who wants to seduce her while his wife - a sudden arrival - frets that she's been assaulted in a hotel broom closet by a bellboy. A randy medical inspector believes that "incest and buggery for depraved appetites" will be reduced by strait-jackets for members of the ensemble.
Orton has a wondrous gift for writing prattle about mischievous nothings as he sends up the Church, the state and medicine. The play demands expert actors and direction to achieve real lightness and exhilaration -- or "insanity." This is not the sentimental comedy of Kaufman & Hart or the TV sit-comery of Neil Simon, hence many lunkheads on GR simply do not "get it." Orton aims to shock, through farce, which usually minds its manners, although nothing really wicked happens, but : you fear it will at any scary second.
What's the difference between madness and sanity? Orton asks. It's only a matter of perspective, he answers.
With mistaken identity, disguise (which requires nudity onstage), sexual confusion and - final twist - the reuniting of twins separated at birth, Orton gives the sophisticated playgoer much to shudder over and more to be dazzled by. In the examination room at a private clinic, where madness and chaos reign, a young female secretary applies for a job with a psychiatrist who wants to seduce her while his wife - a sudden arrival - frets that she's been assaulted in a hotel broom closet by a bellboy. A randy medical inspector believes that "incest and buggery for depraved appetites" will be reduced by strait-jackets for members of the ensemble.
Orton has a wondrous gift for writing prattle about mischievous nothings as he sends up the Church, the state and medicine. The play demands expert actors and direction to achieve real lightness and exhilaration -- or "insanity." This is not the sentimental comedy of Kaufman & Hart or the TV sit-comery of Neil Simon, hence many lunkheads on GR simply do not "get it." Orton aims to shock, through farce, which usually minds its manners, although nothing really wicked happens, but : you fear it will at any scary second.
What's the difference between madness and sanity? Orton asks. It's only a matter of perspective, he answers.
October 2, 2008
It's such a ridiculous and bizarre play that I could not stop myself from turning the pages. lol
November 7, 2020
Read as part of the Complete Plays, of which I hope to review properly.
What the Butler Saw got it's first London Production in March 1969 at the Queen's Theatre, and was revived in 1975 as part of the Joe Orton festival at the Royal Court Theatre, London. It's probably my favourite Orton play, and one of the best I've come across by an English playwright.
What the Butler Saw got it's first London Production in March 1969 at the Queen's Theatre, and was revived in 1975 as part of the Joe Orton festival at the Royal Court Theatre, London. It's probably my favourite Orton play, and one of the best I've come across by an English playwright.
March 9, 2014
I don't usually read plays for fun. I love seeing plays, and I should do more of it, but reading them...it's sort of like being on a literary diet, where all you are offered to eat is tough lean meats and veggies. You eat them, and are still hungry. And because it's diet food, it all needs salt and barely tastes like anything.
With plays, you have to supply too much, how the characters looked when they said something, how they reacted. It is up the actor to provide all that. But if you don't habitually find yourself in that world, it can be difficult for the layman to read a scene where the only sort of indicator of the emotional tenor is the words themselves. If you're lucky, there's a stage direction.
I read this one only because of a set of pictures I ran across one day featuring an actor I admire, taken when he was very young and performing in this play. And I simply had to know what the hell was happening in this play for those pictures to be taken. The production was done in the days before YouTube; and anyway YouTube recordings of plays--especially whole plays-- are relatively rare. So the only choice I had was to read the thing, and miraculously I could do that through our library.
What the Butler Saw was performed originally in the UK in 1969 and then it was done onstage in New York and Canada. It was also revived in London in the nineties and again in 2012. What I have no idea is why. Maybe it is better with talented actors behind it, making the lines sing, and turning the nudity and cross-dressing segments more farcical and not so heavy-handed. Maybe seen the flimsy tentpoles of the plot are more plausible. Maybe the too-neat bow tie of the end is more realistic or at least so ridiculous that it works as satire. My sneaking suspicion is that it was the right play at the right time in '69. Much like Andy Warhol and his soup cans, it said things about society and culture that no one else had the guts to say, things that needed to be out there then. It makes less sense now, except in a retro-curiosity sort of way; none of the risque scenes have the same impact. Indeed, the script I read contained the American and Canadian production notes, and the most shocking aspects had even been toned down from the British original.
Our modern world has moved far beyond the ideas of sexuality explored in this play and our problems on that front are now much more complex. However, we struggle more than ever with the fine line between crazy and sane. Especially now when there's literally a pill for everything. The emphasis would have been there if were written today, and would have worked.
It also bothers me that I can't figure out what the title means. I wonder if I did, would everything snap into place?
With plays, you have to supply too much, how the characters looked when they said something, how they reacted. It is up the actor to provide all that. But if you don't habitually find yourself in that world, it can be difficult for the layman to read a scene where the only sort of indicator of the emotional tenor is the words themselves. If you're lucky, there's a stage direction.
I read this one only because of a set of pictures I ran across one day featuring an actor I admire, taken when he was very young and performing in this play. And I simply had to know what the hell was happening in this play for those pictures to be taken. The production was done in the days before YouTube; and anyway YouTube recordings of plays--especially whole plays-- are relatively rare. So the only choice I had was to read the thing, and miraculously I could do that through our library.
What the Butler Saw was performed originally in the UK in 1969 and then it was done onstage in New York and Canada. It was also revived in London in the nineties and again in 2012. What I have no idea is why. Maybe it is better with talented actors behind it, making the lines sing, and turning the nudity and cross-dressing segments more farcical and not so heavy-handed. Maybe seen the flimsy tentpoles of the plot are more plausible. Maybe the too-neat bow tie of the end is more realistic or at least so ridiculous that it works as satire. My sneaking suspicion is that it was the right play at the right time in '69. Much like Andy Warhol and his soup cans, it said things about society and culture that no one else had the guts to say, things that needed to be out there then. It makes less sense now, except in a retro-curiosity sort of way; none of the risque scenes have the same impact. Indeed, the script I read contained the American and Canadian production notes, and the most shocking aspects had even been toned down from the British original.
Our modern world has moved far beyond the ideas of sexuality explored in this play and our problems on that front are now much more complex. However, we struggle more than ever with the fine line between crazy and sane. Especially now when there's literally a pill for everything. The emphasis would have been there if were written today, and would have worked.
It also bothers me that I can't figure out what the title means. I wonder if I did, would everything snap into place?
December 11, 2021
Xulíssim. El vaig descobrir per una xerrada del Qlit d'aquest any que parlava sobre els "clàssics de la literatura queer". Quin descobriment. És un llibre fet i escrit per i per a gays and girls. Petonets!
December 11, 2025
Felt like I'm watching a Sajid Khan movie..(because of the plot)
Hilarious, really well written!
ABSURD, FUNNY, AND A SATIRE ON FREUDIAN PSYCHOLOGY!
Hilarious, really well written!
ABSURD, FUNNY, AND A SATIRE ON FREUDIAN PSYCHOLOGY!
January 31, 2019
This play still seems to generate as much both uproarious hilarity and self-righteous indignation as it ever did, which I suppose makes it a 'classic'. 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. I hope to die in my prime, said Orton, and did. At the time, a little younger than the author, I couldn't make much sense of it, contemporary productions flopped miserably because the script, like those of most playwrights and screen-writers, only really comes alive in this case under exactly the right director with a split-second sense of timing and with actors who can keep a straight face while delivering lines bordering on gross indecency and which it took nearly two decades to find. 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 .
"In a rational society there is no place for rationality. Restrain the patient, this calls for a straightjacket."
"Have you taken up transvestism? I didn't realize our marriage teetered on the edge of fashion."
Etc .....
To add for the benefit of latter-day neo-puritans or those not familiar with English colloquialisms of the period who ask in perplexity, but there's no butler in it? - What The Butler Saw refers to an Edwardian sea-side pier entertainment, where the prurient-minded could insert a penny and see, as if through a key-hole, a few mildly pornographic fuzzy photos of scantily-clad 'ladies'. 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. One of the stars of those, Kenneth Williams, on the screen outrageous and off it inhibited and timid to an almost pathological degree so that he was hopelessly miscast in the trial stage production, was advised by Orton: "If you don't have fun with your genitals when you can you'll regret it when you can't". This play, like all of Orton's, is a ferociously clever parody of sexual hypocrisy.
"In a rational society there is no place for rationality. Restrain the patient, this calls for a straightjacket."
"Have you taken up transvestism? I didn't realize our marriage teetered on the edge of fashion."
Etc .....
To add for the benefit of latter-day neo-puritans or those not familiar with English colloquialisms of the period who ask in perplexity, but there's no butler in it? - What The Butler Saw refers to an Edwardian sea-side pier entertainment, where the prurient-minded could insert a penny and see, as if through a key-hole, a few mildly pornographic fuzzy photos of scantily-clad 'ladies'. 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. One of the stars of those, Kenneth Williams, on the screen outrageous and off it inhibited and timid to an almost pathological degree so that he was hopelessly miscast in the trial stage production, was advised by Orton: "If you don't have fun with your genitals when you can you'll regret it when you can't". This play, like all of Orton's, is a ferociously clever parody of sexual hypocrisy.
January 19, 2017
Delicious read, quite terrible in every way. Hard to keep up with all the twists and turns. I loved it.
April 12, 2017
I thought that I read my least favorite play when I read The Foreigner by Larry Shue. But, BOY was I wrong. This. This play gets it. I have NEVER hated a play as much as I have hated this one. My poor roommates had to be three while I screamed into the distance about how AWFUL this play is.
Will someone please tell me why this play has so much frivolous talk of rape? Please, like I don't understand at all. Is it supposed to be funny? Because it's not. AT ALL. Characters in this play were asked if they enjoyed being raped. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? I'm honestly so mad. There is the very smallest (EXTREMELY SMALL) possibility that I just read this play wrong and I'll return from my script analysis class tomorrow seeing it in a whole new light. But, I'm not planning on it because I HATED IT.
Will someone please tell me why this play has so much frivolous talk of rape? Please, like I don't understand at all. Is it supposed to be funny? Because it's not. AT ALL. Characters in this play were asked if they enjoyed being raped. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? I'm honestly so mad. There is the very smallest (EXTREMELY SMALL) possibility that I just read this play wrong and I'll return from my script analysis class tomorrow seeing it in a whole new light. But, I'm not planning on it because I HATED IT.
March 18, 2021
I know this play very well - front to back, I dare say.
What is interesting to me is not many people seem to understand its true humour.
It's confusing, sometimes realistic, often untamed.
Joe Orton criticizes everything that is possible about the human condition. Men, women, authorities, sanity, love affairs, youth, cruelty, sexuality and identity... he provides a clever and sometimes dark twist for everything. All is under the 'mask' of a farce.
It's better to see this play in action than to read it. It's not for everybody at any given moment. I believe it tends to be shocking but in a thought-provoking, even positive way.
What is interesting to me is not many people seem to understand its true humour.
It's confusing, sometimes realistic, often untamed.
Joe Orton criticizes everything that is possible about the human condition. Men, women, authorities, sanity, love affairs, youth, cruelty, sexuality and identity... he provides a clever and sometimes dark twist for everything. All is under the 'mask' of a farce.
It's better to see this play in action than to read it. It's not for everybody at any given moment. I believe it tends to be shocking but in a thought-provoking, even positive way.
January 27, 2020
I worked on a local reading of this play over the weekend and I would love nothing more than to see it produced. Excellent farce.
December 1, 2023
Hilarious and weird. Not much else to say. Enjoyed.
3.5 rounded up.
3.5 rounded up.
October 30, 2022
Read for Queer Lit course
February 19, 2023
DNF
Trigger warning: rape culture and sexual abuse
“The ending is one of those delights that Oscar Wilde might have dreamed up in a sequel to The Importance of Being Earnest.” This was the review on the back of the play, which was music to my ears as I have just read Earnest and loved it. How this could be compared to Wilde in any way is shocking to me.
After reading 20% of the play I stopped. The ongoing “joke” was a doctor sexually manipulating and coercing a young woman interviewing to be his secretary. Using his power to get her to undress when she doesn’t want to. Then when a senior doctor arrives to examine his practice and finds the naked woman, he lies and tells him she is one of his mental patients to avoid accountability. When she tries to protest she is then sectioned by the senior doctor who begins asking her immediately if she enjoyed her father sexually abusing her and when she says he didn’t abuse her at all he tells her he did and she just has to admit it to herself. This is where I stopped.
I really don’t care what the denouement is, even if both men get their comeuppance at the end and the woman is vindicated (and from reading a synopsis this isn’t even the case anyway). The fact that the sole comedic path of the first 20% of the play is rape jokes is yuck. We’re being asked to laugh at the powerlessness of the woman. Wilde uses his characters to criticise the problem by empowering his female characters, this is completely the opposite.
Also medical professionals taking advantage of their power is just too close to reality in the present.
I’ve just read other reviews as I’m so utterly bewildered by this play I had to check it wasn’t just me, and it’s not. Someone’s review said it reads more like “a misogynist horror play” which is exactly how I will now describe it. If it wasn’t supposed to be a comedy and was a misogynist horror play then it would be successful. No more Joe Orton.
Trigger warning: rape culture and sexual abuse
“The ending is one of those delights that Oscar Wilde might have dreamed up in a sequel to The Importance of Being Earnest.” This was the review on the back of the play, which was music to my ears as I have just read Earnest and loved it. How this could be compared to Wilde in any way is shocking to me.
After reading 20% of the play I stopped. The ongoing “joke” was a doctor sexually manipulating and coercing a young woman interviewing to be his secretary. Using his power to get her to undress when she doesn’t want to. Then when a senior doctor arrives to examine his practice and finds the naked woman, he lies and tells him she is one of his mental patients to avoid accountability. When she tries to protest she is then sectioned by the senior doctor who begins asking her immediately if she enjoyed her father sexually abusing her and when she says he didn’t abuse her at all he tells her he did and she just has to admit it to herself. This is where I stopped.
I really don’t care what the denouement is, even if both men get their comeuppance at the end and the woman is vindicated (and from reading a synopsis this isn’t even the case anyway). The fact that the sole comedic path of the first 20% of the play is rape jokes is yuck. We’re being asked to laugh at the powerlessness of the woman. Wilde uses his characters to criticise the problem by empowering his female characters, this is completely the opposite.
Also medical professionals taking advantage of their power is just too close to reality in the present.
I’ve just read other reviews as I’m so utterly bewildered by this play I had to check it wasn’t just me, and it’s not. Someone’s review said it reads more like “a misogynist horror play” which is exactly how I will now describe it. If it wasn’t supposed to be a comedy and was a misogynist horror play then it would be successful. No more Joe Orton.
Read
May 27, 2024What did I just read!
January 10, 2019
Alright.
Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright. Let me try and gather my thoughts. My heads a mess. I've just finished this. Sitting out in the cold on a Thursday morning and afternoon. Somewhat in mourning, somewhat feeling sick. Dizzy, mind in pieces, eternally aware of my racing pulse. Need to cut down on the cigarettes. But this book? Well, simply the weirdest fucking thing I've ever read.
The. Weirdest. Fucking. Thing. I've. Ever. Read. The maddest, most surreal, most manic, most exhausting Fucking. Thing. I've. Ever. Read.
I don't even know if I'm glad I read this book. It's exhausted me. Completely fucked my mind, and I don't say that lightly. This is the biggest head fuck in the world. It's like submerging yourself in a Rene Magritte painting, unable to get out. I felt like I was in a different world. And a horrible world at that. One where nothing makes sense and nothing is real and everything is horrible. It's insane - quite literally. Insane, insane, insane. What's that line in it... Something about how only the insane would claim to be sane... Jesus Christ man. It's terrifying.
Do I recommend this book? Yes. But I do, genuinely, think that this book has had somewhat a negative impact on my mental health. At least in the short term. My mind feels like it's melting and drooping around in some what of brainy splurgy goo.
To sum it up. It's like Fawlty Towers in a mental asylum written by Pirandello on a fuck-tonne of drugs.
Joe Orton was some writer.
Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright. Let me try and gather my thoughts. My heads a mess. I've just finished this. Sitting out in the cold on a Thursday morning and afternoon. Somewhat in mourning, somewhat feeling sick. Dizzy, mind in pieces, eternally aware of my racing pulse. Need to cut down on the cigarettes. But this book? Well, simply the weirdest fucking thing I've ever read.
The. Weirdest. Fucking. Thing. I've. Ever. Read. The maddest, most surreal, most manic, most exhausting Fucking. Thing. I've. Ever. Read.
I don't even know if I'm glad I read this book. It's exhausted me. Completely fucked my mind, and I don't say that lightly. This is the biggest head fuck in the world. It's like submerging yourself in a Rene Magritte painting, unable to get out. I felt like I was in a different world. And a horrible world at that. One where nothing makes sense and nothing is real and everything is horrible. It's insane - quite literally. Insane, insane, insane. What's that line in it... Something about how only the insane would claim to be sane... Jesus Christ man. It's terrifying.
Do I recommend this book? Yes. But I do, genuinely, think that this book has had somewhat a negative impact on my mental health. At least in the short term. My mind feels like it's melting and drooping around in some what of brainy splurgy goo.
To sum it up. It's like Fawlty Towers in a mental asylum written by Pirandello on a fuck-tonne of drugs.
Joe Orton was some writer.
March 16, 2015
What the Butler Saw
What the Butler Saw is a classic of dark English farce. The play is absolutely ridiculous, but the speed and wit of the language is simply outstanding. Unlike Orton’s other plays which, in my opinion drag on, the language in this drama rips force as a kind of precursor to some of Tarrantino’s best movies. The play starts as a woman applies for a secretarial job in a psychiatrist’s office. The psychiatrist attempts to exert his influence over her and induces her to disrobe. His wife interrupts them and he shuffles the poor woman behind a curtain. The wife arrives with a boy from a hotel, claiming that she has been raped by the boy and is currently being blackmailed by him. Then another psychiatrist arrives, and attempts to declare basically everyone crazy and have them committed: “We’ve no privileged class here. It’s democratic lunacy we practice.” There is much confusion as the psychiatrist attempts to get away with his original indiscretion, finding only that he digs himself into ever-deeper holes. “You can’t be a rationalist in an irrational world. It isn’t rational.” The play descends into total farce: “Doctor, doctor! The world is full of naked men running in all directions!”
See my other reviews here!
What the Butler Saw is a classic of dark English farce. The play is absolutely ridiculous, but the speed and wit of the language is simply outstanding. Unlike Orton’s other plays which, in my opinion drag on, the language in this drama rips force as a kind of precursor to some of Tarrantino’s best movies. The play starts as a woman applies for a secretarial job in a psychiatrist’s office. The psychiatrist attempts to exert his influence over her and induces her to disrobe. His wife interrupts them and he shuffles the poor woman behind a curtain. The wife arrives with a boy from a hotel, claiming that she has been raped by the boy and is currently being blackmailed by him. Then another psychiatrist arrives, and attempts to declare basically everyone crazy and have them committed: “We’ve no privileged class here. It’s democratic lunacy we practice.” There is much confusion as the psychiatrist attempts to get away with his original indiscretion, finding only that he digs himself into ever-deeper holes. “You can’t be a rationalist in an irrational world. It isn’t rational.” The play descends into total farce: “Doctor, doctor! The world is full of naked men running in all directions!”
See my other reviews here!
February 10, 2017
Review to follow.
September 8, 2016
Joe Orton was taken seriously in the 1960s. His style of radically sick humour seemed very modern and had many elements in common with the theatre of the absurd. Indeed his plays are fundamentally strings of unrelated jokes and gags in dreadful taste.
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. Indeed if one does not have a close friend or relative associated with the production it would be insane to attend a performance of "What the Butler Saw" never mind sitting through to the end.
The works of Joe Orton ought well to be forgotten. Any new theatrical revivals would be the height of folly.
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. Indeed if one does not have a close friend or relative associated with the production it would be insane to attend a performance of "What the Butler Saw" never mind sitting through to the end.
The works of Joe Orton ought well to be forgotten. Any new theatrical revivals would be the height of folly.
June 15, 2015
Gutsy and gross, indecent and wildly hilarious, Orton mixes dark comedy and farce brilliantly. The plotting is intricate and sure handed and the dialogue some of the best and most quotable since Oscar Wilde. Orton mixes controlled chaos and misadventure seamlessly to create not only a hilarious and out-of-control evening of madness, incest, sex, and violence, but also subtly dismantles the English middle-class in all it's wonderful hypocrisy's. For the farce aficionado, there is much to appreciate here in this courageous subversion and homage to the genre.
November 28, 2013
This is, hands-down, the worst play I've ever read. With every turn of the page, the plot got more ridiculous, the characters less believable. The fact that it won the Olivier for best play in 1970 causes me to shudder in horror at the thought of the other nominated plays that it beat that year. I'm truly tempted to burn this book, rather than returning it to the library, to save future readers the horror of reading it.
November 30, 2018
The politics of this have aged extremely poorly, with most of the humor coming from attempted rape and mistaken homosexuality and gender norm crossings. 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.
January 2, 2021
Joe Orton is one of my favorites. His comedy is so dirty, funny and subversive. My one possible complaint here is that it reads a lot like Oscar Wilde (punchline, punchline...punchline... punchline... punchline, punchline) rather than spending much time developing the characters. But that's pretty common for this type of social examination through sex comedy type of show.
February 11, 2017
What? What? I like the surprise ending, but the majority of this was just a little too ridiculous for me. I realize it's a farce, but I was genuinely getting annoyed throughout most of it. Noises Off is a great farce. This one was just a little too much for me.
April 16, 2014
Intensely funny, ridiculously imaginative and the play you'll want to see in the flesh. Too witty, too good.
April 19, 2014
+You never told me you were seducing me. You said you were interested in my mind. -That's like 'open sesame'-a formula for gaining entrance.
May 31, 2017
Stage managing this in between fits of laughter
May 25, 2017
i am so uncomfortable after reading this??????????
March 7, 2024
Raucous, deeply silly, and the furthest Orton went into traditional farce, without quite the biting, nihilistic subversive comedy of 'Loot' and 'Entertaining Mr Sloane'.
A lascivious, dishonest doctor, Prentice, attempts to seduce a naive new secretarial hire, Geraldine, by convincing her to undress for a medical exam. He's interrupted by his wife - their typically Carry On-esque marriage is in a deep state of mutual loathing - who has escaped being sexually assaulted at a local hotel by a young porter, Nick, who soon arrives with plans to blackmail her. Prentice's tangle of lies is heightened by the arrival of Dr Rance, a psychological inspector figure who insists on using every lie and misunderstanding to further his theories on childhood incest and various Freudian complexes.
What follows is hilarious, and somewhat innocent despite its attempts at wickedly bad taste. Almost everyone ends up cross-dressing or disguised as someone else, contradicting themselves to reinforce what they've said, falling from windows, etc; Orton is especially good at the truth of events sounding like a lie, or a line from one plot strand complicating another when delivered at just the wrong moment.
But for all that this is probably his strongest piece of craft, in terms of technical farce, it's oddly lightweight against the social commentary and absurdist class critique of his earlier work. While we do have poor innocent Geraldine as the least dishonest member of the cast, and she's treated horribly, this is as daring as Orton gets this time around. The revelations at the end are in gleefully bad taste, but the irony surrounding them lets us know Orton's not endorsing them - just using them to shock, which ironically makes them less shocking as we're not reslly meant to believe in them the way the characters do. And the satire of the psychological trends of the mid-20th C is hardly as daring as his earlier takes on the hypocrisies of social conformity and British state law were before.
And that's fine! I laughed so much while reading this. As the last in the trilogy of Orton's major works, it's wonderful, stupid fun.
A lascivious, dishonest doctor, Prentice, attempts to seduce a naive new secretarial hire, Geraldine, by convincing her to undress for a medical exam. He's interrupted by his wife - their typically Carry On-esque marriage is in a deep state of mutual loathing - who has escaped being sexually assaulted at a local hotel by a young porter, Nick, who soon arrives with plans to blackmail her. Prentice's tangle of lies is heightened by the arrival of Dr Rance, a psychological inspector figure who insists on using every lie and misunderstanding to further his theories on childhood incest and various Freudian complexes.
What follows is hilarious, and somewhat innocent despite its attempts at wickedly bad taste. Almost everyone ends up cross-dressing or disguised as someone else, contradicting themselves to reinforce what they've said, falling from windows, etc; Orton is especially good at the truth of events sounding like a lie, or a line from one plot strand complicating another when delivered at just the wrong moment.
But for all that this is probably his strongest piece of craft, in terms of technical farce, it's oddly lightweight against the social commentary and absurdist class critique of his earlier work. While we do have poor innocent Geraldine as the least dishonest member of the cast, and she's treated horribly, this is as daring as Orton gets this time around. The revelations at the end are in gleefully bad taste, but the irony surrounding them lets us know Orton's not endorsing them - just using them to shock, which ironically makes them less shocking as we're not reslly meant to believe in them the way the characters do. And the satire of the psychological trends of the mid-20th C is hardly as daring as his earlier takes on the hypocrisies of social conformity and British state law were before.
And that's fine! I laughed so much while reading this. As the last in the trilogy of Orton's major works, it's wonderful, stupid fun.
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