WHAT THE BUTLER SAW Vaudeville Theatre

Joe Orton’s much over-rated, Freudian black farce, which is set in a lunatic asylum, constantly oversteps the bounds of good taste with Ortonesque vulgar bravado and a verbal style, which is modelled on Oscar Wilde’s epigrams. It hasn’t had a decent production in years. Premiered in 1969 the bogus psychiatry, kinky capers and puerile behavior were not to the taste of the first night audience and the actors were booed by the gallery. “Filth!” they cried. “Rubbish! Take it off!” The play was almost universally condemned by the critics. The mistake was to have given it a slap-up West End production. Orton wanted Alistair Sim. He got Ralph Richardson, who was totally out of his depth. The present revival doesn’t know how to perform it. The desperate actors shout away and are desperately unfunny.