Laughtime in Bedlam

In his all too brief career, the only grief that British Playwright Joe Orton ever visited on anyone in the theater was his untimely death at the age of 34. Orton gleefully beat sacred cows on their way to the last roundup (Entertaining Mr. Shane; TIME, Oct. 22, 1965). He was a black-comedy farceur who could dance on a coffin and spit in the corpse's eye (Loot; TIME, March 29, 1968). It has been said that "a joke is a scream for help." In Orton's mouth, a joke was an urbane substitute for murder. He was a wild Wilde man.

The zaniest play he wrote is now on view off Broadway. What the Butler Saw is basically a Feydeauan farce. Like the great French playwright, Orton recognized that a closed door is funnier, and maybe even more erotic, than an open bed. Orton, like Feydeau, understood that logic carried to its logical conclusion is madness.

Superiors in Madness. The setting of the play is the fashionable modern equivalent of a madhouse, a psychiatric clinic. Dr. Prentice (Laurence Luckinbill) has just advertised for a secretary-typist. In comes Geraldine Barclay (Diana Davila), a toothsome cutie of unblemished innocence. Before anyone can say "stocking fetishist," he has her stockings off. Before anyone can yell "body snatcher," she is lying nude on the doctor's examination couch (behind a curtain, that is--this play caters only to the playgoer's imagination). In comes the doctor's wife (Jan Farrand), a blonde minibombshell charitably described by her husband as a nymphomaniac. When she makes her usual plaint about Dr. Prentice's lack of expertise as a lover, the doctor replies a trifle uncharitably: "You were born with your legs apart. They'll send you to the grave in a Y-shaped coffin."

In comes Mrs. Prentice's previous night's lover, Nick (Charles Murphy), a hotel bellboy in full uniform who wants to blackmail the lady with some morning-after photo negatives. She replies haughtily: "When I gave myself to you the contract didn't include cinematic rights." To cap the comers-in, in comes Dr. Ranee (Lucian Scott), an official inspector of mental clinics: "I represent our government, your immediate superiors in madness." What follows is a running maze of exits, reappearances, disappearances, mistaken identities, clothes swapping between men and women, and one of those crazy-happy recognition endings that Shakespeare used in which half the people onstage turn out to be long-separated relatives of the other half. Joseph Hardy, who last directed the mutely ominous schoolboys of Child's Play, moves his cast around like field and track stars and earns the versatility award of the season.

Therapy Workshop. Many of Orton's jokes are the kind told in mixed company only after several drinks. But the man had a machine-gun wit that he leveled on pomposities, pretensions and do-good liberal cant of any kind. Sample burst of fire: Mrs. Prentice: "What's Miss Barclay doing in the therapy workshop?" Dr. Prentice: "She's making white tar babies for sale in color-prejudice trouble spots."

The underlying motif of the play is madness. The government is mad. The police are mad. Psychiatrists are mad. By extension, the modern world is mad. It is not such a new idea. What is wonderfully refreshing is that Joe Orton has such mad, mad fun with it.

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