WHAT THE BUTLER SAW
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However, Orton has more on his mind than merely repeating the same old farce formulas: the near meetings, the mistaken identity, the done-wrong spouses out for blood. He uses the conventions of traditional sex farce to mock conventional (and very hypocritical) British middle-class heterosexual attitudes about sex, creating a mad world in which some outrageous sexual indiscretions are allowed without fear of retribution (Mrs. Prentice admits matter-of-factly that she needs 100 pounds to pay off a blackmailer) while others are harshly punished (Dr. Prentice’s relatively staid and very traditionally heterosexual designs on poor Barclay). Barclay is committed not once but twice to an insane asylum, and Dr. Prentice spends most of the play struggling desperately to preserve his life and his career.
Yet What the Butler Saw is also far more than a parodic inversion of the straight world. For Orton has created an alternative world that is just as neurotic and just as unfair as the present one. Shame and guilt rule the day, and things go from bad to worse when the authorities (the officious, half-mad Dr. Rance and later the dull-witted Sergeant Match) step in to “straighten” things.
It also helps that director Jacques Cartier has assembled a cast capable of executing Orton’s physical comedy without making it look stupid or forced. Amandes, Cochran, and gangly John Alcott (Sergeant Match) manage to get laughs with the sort of gags–characters hiding under desks and running through scenes in their underwear–I normally won’t crack a smile for.
