What the Butler Saw (play)

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What the Butler Saw is a play by Joe Orton first produced on March 5, 1969, in London. The first public performance of WTBS — almost two years after Orton’s brutal murder — was reportedly barracked with cries of "filth!" Those in the theatre that evening may have been used to less explicit performance than the 21st Century audience. The 1960s were a decade of ‘sexual liberation’, continued persecution of homosexuals and high-profile obscenity lawsuits.

The play incoporates a combination of British dry humour and seamier contents, compared to works by Alan Ayckbourn or Ray Cooney. For example, at one point, the police sergeant (a staple of this genre) says, "During that period he is alleged to have misconducted himself with a party of school children." Later, the sergeant accuses "Marriage excuses no one from the freaks roll-call." At the same time, it is typical of the style:

Mrs. Prentice: "You told Dr. Rance that she was burning the golliwogs. Was that a lie?"

Prentice: "It may have been. I can’t remember."

In Act II, Doctor Rance talks about how he will use the situation to develop a new book. "The final chapters of my book are knitting together: incest, buggery, outrageous women and strange love-cults catering for depraved appetites. All the fashionable bric-a-brac."

In addition, the play includes a number of farces. It opens with a doctor examining a beautiful young girl in a job interview. He convinces her to undress as part of the interview. When his wife enters, he attempts to cover up his activity by hiding the girl behind a curtain. With this, the farce is off and running. Soon, the girl is dressed like a boy and a boy is dressed like a girl, Winston Churchill is missing body parts and the doctor is digging himself further and further into trouble by piling up more and more ridiculous lies. A notable part of the dialogue in this act includes the following:

Prentice: "I'm not mad. It only looks that way."

Rance: "Your actions today would get the Archbishop of Canterbury declared non-compos."

Prentice: "I'm not the Archbishop of Canterbury."

Rance: "That will come at a later stage of your illness."

The social change that Dr Prentice’s psychology is drawn against manifests itself throughout the play. 1967 saw the decriminalisation of sexual intercourse between two consenting gay men. Orton seemed to be revelling in his sexuality, though he did not survive long enough to enjoy its legality. The face of popular entertainment was changing, too. The Beatles were selling pop songs about taking drugs; Joe Orton flings a cocktail of stimulants and depressants into these characters’ story, throwing minds further awry. Dr Prentice is a character existing in the midst of an evolving world.

WTBS is a story about men and women, the ways they feel and communicate, and of desire for power. One of Orton’s characters calls it a “Graeco-Roman hallucination”. The on-stage visions take their themes from the old tragedies. Caligula and Jocasta rest comfortably together in the genealogy of the farce. Cinema-goers will recognise situations used by Orton’s contemporaries, the Carry On comedians of the late 1960s. Carry On Doctor was showing whilst WTBS was being written in 1967.

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