“What the Butler Saw” (LAArtsOnline.com)

www.laartsonline.com/theatre/
By Ken Werther
Graphics Courtesy of CTG

Twisting plot lines, mistaken identities, slamming doors, blackmail, sexual innuendo, subversive wit, and an outrageous lack of appropriateness… you’re talking my kind of entertainment! Joe Orton’s full-throttle farce What the Butler Saw is the last play written by England’s legendary playwright before his untimely death in 1967 at age 34. Center Theatre Group brings us this comic masterpiece as the last production of the Mark Taper Forum’s 2014 season.

The original production of What the Butler Saw opened in London on March 5, 1969. The play, a timeless tale of sex and repression in a culture gone mad, was decried at the time as scandalous for its character’s raging libidos and rampant mockery of morality. In spite of a small body of work that also included television and radio plays, Joe Orton emerged as one of the seminal playwrights of the 20th century—a direct successor to Oscar Wilde, William Congreve, and Noel Coward. Orton’s other well-known plays are Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Loot, which were presented in repertory, directed by John Tillinger, at the Mark Taper Forum in 1987. Tillinger, a leading interpreter of Orton’s work, returns to direct the savagely funny Butler.

For me, there is nothing more delicious in the theatre than a great farce impeccably directed and performed, and it doesn’t happen often enough. This play is one of the best. I’ve got my tickets and I’m ready to laugh!

What the Butler Saw runs November 12 – December 21 at the Mark Taper Forum.