What The Butler Saw by Joe Orton
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2016
- What the Butler Saw was one of several plays shown in the BBC’s Theatre Night strand in 1987. In this production Dinsdale Landen plays Dr Prentice with Prunella Scales playing Mrs Prentice. Timothy West (Prunella’s husband off-screen) perfectly incarnates the monstrous Dr Rance, a character so intoxicated with his own righteousness that he’s prepared to sign a committal order against anyone who crosses his path. (He boasts at one point of having committed his entire family.) It’s a great performance but West is ably matched by Dinsdale Landen and Prunella Scales. Barry Davis is the director. Plays such as this suffer without the involvement of an audience but this production gives an idea of how manic a decent stage production must be.
(via www.johncoulthart.com)
The genius that is Joe Orton. I absolutely love all his work It has me in stitches at the humour in all his work.An absolute travesty that he died so young.We lost a great talent.Can you imagine how awesome his work would have been as he got older?.It’s sad we will never get to see the great work he would’ve created in the future.There was so much more to come and now we’ll never know.Fantastic production and faultless sterling performances from the cast.Interesting to find Raquel from‘Only fools and horses in it!Rest in peace Joe you’re really missed. X
The greatest production, in my opinion, of one of the funniest and most subversive plays ever written. Cruel, hyper articulate, hilarious, gloriously mannered, beautifully acted by this cast. Dinsdale Landen and Prunella Scales, in particular, stand out. Their dialogue exchanges fizz and spark like nothing else.
Thanks for uploading.I saw this when first broadcast and it is still as brilliant now as then.
Brilliant clever and so perfectly acted by all , the writing is so ahead of its time 50 odd years later ,
no it’s not.. it’s dated sitcom. it’s not far from carry on. pinter is a superior art form by far ..
❤ The West’s! Oh I do worry how precious Pru is faring. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🥰
Beyond wonderful. Thank you, Joe--and actors and crew..
Thanks for posting. I was in a production of this at Northampton Royal Theatre in the 80's with the wonderful David Kelsey as Dr. Rance who played it like Hitler. Brilliant and missed.
Such a joy and even more relevant in the 21st century one can imagine John Cleese and his Monty Python colleagues taking glorious notes of this brilliant cacophony.
HaHa LOVED every line and twist. A truly surreal scene where any/all of us might be Insane !? Been meaning to watch more of Joe Orton's stuff -and Very glad I have. Missed this before on TV so Thank You. I can't believe I'm commenting.
Thanks very much for this, a great classic.
cheers for putting this on . I'm going to see A local production of entertaining Mr Sloane in April so this will get me prepared.
So many memorable witticisms from Orton! He's a C20th Oscar Wilde :)
Ha Yeah well said. Yes some real funny lines from start to finish !
Brilliant,loved every minute
Thanks so much for this, Ortonesque .
Another outstanding performance by the great Prunella Scales
That's what I was going to say - I adore Sybil from 'Fawlty Towers'.
Prunella Scales is a fantastic actress, a true star - and so much more talented than her over rated,egotistical husband Timothy West!
Apart from Beryl Reid Prunella would have played Kath in Sloane brilliantly.
@@glamdolly30 Timothy is a nice guy who has stood by his wife and family try being nice for a change it will not hurt you...
@@meestermeesterhastings.3159 Why shouldn't he have stood by his lovely wife and kids? What a stupid comment.
"I can't employ you if you were in any way miraculous!"
One can watch many biographies and explanations of Joe Orton. If one really wants to understand why Orton was worth incorporating into the pantheon of great English playwrights, watch this.
My drama group are performing this in April. I am playing Geraldine Barclay. This edition has been very helpful xxx
Hayley Marjolin how did the production go all those months ago?
How did the performance go in April ? GREAT I Hope x
i playing Doctor Rance...premiere is in april 2018...wish me luck
Wow, so Tim and Prunella, basically husband and wife acting together.
A leaning I must admire - Joe Orton was very, very good with his polished wit, so to speak.
Oh fuck off Brian you Moron
Very witty, and full of double entendres. Thank you for the upload.
Three minutes in and I am screaming with laughter.
Bloody marvellous!
Imo Orton's masterpiece.
I remember first watching this as a girl & I was in ore , I was gobsmacked how amazing it is
Fantastic! Tessa Peake-Jones is amazing. Just discovered Orton, looking forward.
Love it x
I actually know more about Joe Orion, his life and his death than I do his plays. (I saw “Prick Up Your Ears” quite a number of years ago.) This is the first Orton play I’ve seen from start to finish. What a pleasure! I wish these were produced more often. Someone claimed they haven’t aged well, but if this is any example, they have aged very well indeed.
I would think that people who regard heterosexual attraction as 'inappropriate' for the 21st Century would think this particular example hasn't 'aged well'.
It's a bit of a dilemma for them, with Orton himself being a fine upstanding pederast.
bingola45
@@inkyguy A piece of advice:
If you haven't got anything to say, say nothing.
bingola45, I'd advise you follow your own advice.
@@inkyguy I always do.
So naughty and brilliant!
So funny, especially Prunella Scales
I LOVE THIS........IT MAKES LIFE WORTH LIVING........
One of the wittiest plays in the English language, I'd dare to say equal to Oscar Wilde. And a brilliant cast.
Really? Equal to Wilde? Crazy.
@@RkristinaTay I agree, I think Orton has dated hopelessly.
@@ritawing1064 It was his constant dating that got him killed!
this is the first i have seen by Orton. my impression is that he was at least equal to Oscar Wilde .
10:00 Sound proof curtain?! How futuristic! 😅😅😅
Brilliantly hilarious.
awesome
Exceptional humour at its twistful best
It's Raquel from Only Fools and Horses!!!!
Brilliant performance by Tim West. Saw Ralph Richardson in the same role on the second night of the premier of this play at the Queen’s Theatre in the West End. Sir Ralph had difficulty with the script and was somewhat befuddled.
A collection of remarkable pecadillos, indeed! ♡♡♡♡♡♡
Oh it's terribly funny! Like others I know a fair bit about Orton but never have watched a play!
Amazingly clever!
Joe took a lot from classic comic farce, from Menander, Plautus and Terence and their heirs through Shakespeare (e.g. 'The Comedy of Errors'; also the non-farcical 'Tempest') to Wilde ('The Importance of Being Earnest') and beyond, with the recurring theme of divided siblings being reunited by a dramatic 'deus ex machina'. The play is stuffed full both of classic farcical business and of allusions to that tradition (e.g. the reuniting of two halves of a brooch). I think I might try a learned article on this for the London Review of Books!
Don't forget to include the classic themes of homosexual lovers murdering each other!
Geoff Wilkins, no lack of French farce either.
John Lawrence, a rare phenomenon, especially when compared to the number of heterosexuals daily killing their paramours, spouses and children.
i couldnt put it better. i emigrated to Sweden in 1967 so i missed this. now i want to read everything Orton wrote.
West and Scales 💓
They should show all his plays
Tremendous stuff
Oscar Wilde on speed! Many thanks!
Another British film good cast comedy
lol wow...what an ending !!!!!
It's ok. I adore all these actors (there's so little Dinsdale Landen on film I've been able to find that I was particularly looking forward to him) and I get that this is in the vein of Noises Off (ensemble hijinks) but I feel they could have camped it up a bit more. For me the humor is so broad that playing it straghit-ish left me a little bored. I suspect I'd like it better on stage.
Btw, Dinsdale's performance opposite Alan Bates in Two Sundays (by Simon Gray) is what got me hooked on him. So smooth!
how is this cited as a reference
When I paid Oscar Wilde a visit
In Hell I inquired "How is it?"
"A miserable furnace
But the fiends love my 'Ernest'
So thank heavens their taste is exquisite!"
Then Joe Orton stepped up and said brightly
"Oscar judges demonic tastes rightly.
His play sits on the shelf
While Satan Himself
Likes to stage What the Butler Saw nightly!"
There are different acting versions of this play. One doesn't have the part of Churchill in it.
PROPER comedy !
Absurd briliance from a genius playwright taken far too soon. All are sane bar Timothy West.
Nice to see tyler butterworth the son of the great Peter
Give credit to Janet Brown too. She contributed 50% lmao.
Oscar Wilde x Sigmund Freud = Joe Orton
world first
Amazing now we can all go and have a good shit!
Life would be miserable without satisfactory bowel movements. Vacate daily!
Absolutely hilarious and a take on the humbug of psycho this and that and trans this and that.
1:15:15
1:12:31
Hilarious play. But video sound is bad. Too many rich lines are garbled and smothered. No articulation !!!!!!!!!!!!
What a transexual non-binary experience.
Wait.. WHATT
Marvelous isn't it? 🌈⚧✊.
Very depressing that this is considered comedy which would have been Joe Orton's point.
brilliant, but you probably need to have been exposed to an English upbringing to catch all the humour and ridicule.
Unfortunately marred by the doctor racing through all of his dialogue at breakneck speed. A poor performance unworthy of the rest of the very good cast.
Rubbish he played it as directed
The pace is fast and furious. No time for stopping and winking at the audience in the hope that they're getting the jokes. This is not Noël Coward you know 😌
It’s less the speed than that British mumbling that’s mostly incomprehensible. People seem to think it’s a laugh riot.
A bit too much. The english seem fond of unrelenting funny lines, one after another. I think it is more entertaining to have a brief break to recover from one clever line before another is imposed. Like rolling waves upon a shore, rather than a firehose full in the face.
Patty Ann, that’s how this kind of play goes. There’s always another show.
You just dont get it do you
it is very fast and you have to listen very carefully.. i think too you need to have resided in, been exposed to post-victorian, post world wars one and two, post noblesse-oblige, post class-coping, post sexual-repression-struggling England to get all the wit for it is very English. as such it is dated, as dated as the bible. an American friend studying in London told me the following. in New York he had learned that in England there was a great emphasis on being polite. so when he went to find student lodgings in London he tried his utmost to be polite. the lady behind the desk said, "Please would you close the door a moment?" he did so. then she said, "I know you're an American but i think you could at least TRY to be polite."
Nonsense, its still radical in its insight into polymorphous perversity, taboo these days still. Revolutionary compared to the P.C straightjacket imposed by old fashioned prudes.
Ludicrous Tripe !
can’t watch this it’s like a carry on film.. i guess of it’s time but gawd it’s bad.
It's a farce, the fast paced witty dialogue is key
Not funny; only trying hard to be--with occasional successes.
You don't understand the references.
Piyush Off!
"Its far too late to tell the truth." Sounds like a comment on the Woke - ists.
Not funny.
speaking too fast .. and no stumbling means old fashioned.. dated sadly