Washington Post Review of Signature Theatre's What The Butler Saw

washingtonpost.com: Chaos Served Properly: This 'Butler' Does It "What the Butler Saw" has absolutely no redeeming social value, and that's a blessing. Joe Orton's 1967 farce of wild yens and vile urges is mayhem of the highest -- in other words, lowest -- order, a delirious dark twin to all those tacky, libido-driven West End romps that appeal to the snickering-schoolboy aspect of the British psyche.

The play, the last major one Orton wrote before being murdered by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, is Wildean in structure and Rabelaisian in spirit. It's both well made and anarchic, conventional and scandalous. A love of language, a penchant for chaos, and a contempt for the Establishment are all vividly present in this gleefully nasty piece of work, which features, among other things, a drug-crazed policeman, an ingenue in bondage, a naked bellboy and Winston Churchill's unmentionables.

Like all good farce, "What the Butler Saw" works only if all the disorder is scrupulously orderly, a condition that Signature Theatre has seen to admirably in its crackerjack revival. Directed by Jonathan Bernstein with fine slapstick flair for the well-timed door-slam, this "Butler" serves Orton exceedingly well. Bernstein and his nimble ensemble, drilled in their quick changes and getaways nearly as rigorously as Parris Island recruits, are at one with Orton's brand of dysfunction in the ranks.