What the Butler Saw

Published Friday 22 July 2005 at 17:15 by Jeremy Austin

Wildly camp and impressively knock-about, David Grindley has managed to capture the spirit, the energy and the naughtiness of Joe Orton’s subversive farce.

Many comedians today are still only tentatively testing boundaries that Orton leapt with gay abandon more than 35 years ago - making light of rape, incest and underage sex may not shock quite as much as it did in 1969 but it still feels a little sinful to laugh. Lines about the senior Civil Service being populated by the dead and the insane still raise a cheer and the absurdist humour - mixing Ray Cooney with The Goons - tickles even now. And was Orton’s insistence that it only takes a uniform to bestow authority ever more poignant?

It is quite something when at least two of the cast can raise the question of whether anyone was ever better in the role. Malcolm Sinclair has created the definitive Dr Rance - the government psychiatrist whose pompous insanity throws doubt on to the lunatics/asylum relationship. His timing and delivery are exquisite. Belinda Lang, playing Mrs Prentice - the nymphomaniac, alcoholic wife of Dr Prentice, played ably and sweatily by the excellent Jonathan Coy - is also a delight. Her acid delivery burns through the action.

Joanna Page as the grossly mistreated secretary Geraldine Barclay should jar with her heavily stylised delivery but emphasising the Loony Tunes absurdity of the situation only draws the audience deeper into the farce. Geoff Breton, a third-year student at the Drama Centre, initially struggles to find the right tone but eventually settles in.