Two years ago this week, the Saturday after Thanksgiving to be exact, I pulled a muscle on my left calf doing some facsimile of windsprints during boxing class at my gym. My first thought above the excruciating pain was (well, right after “where the hell is the Tylenol in this joint?”), “how am I going to survive the walkaround stage production of Sarah Kane’s “Psychosis 4.48″ that afternoon?” Injured leg notwithstanding, I was determined to see the play, not only because it was the Chicago premiere of the last work of a major contemporary playwright, but also because the Hypocrites, one of the city’s most exciting storefront theatres, was performing it, with it’s Artistic Director, the brilliant Sean Graney, directing. I wasn’t disappointed, because Graney’s production of “Psychosis 4.48″, with its audience wandering around the Steppenwolf garage, without any separation between them and the performers, and a truckload of strange but beautiful artistic flourishes (voodoo dolls on the chorus’s outfits, a bathtub in the middle of the floor where the lead actress got dunked repeatedly) was mesmerizing and powerful. Over the years, I have been excited about Sean’s work, and have come to associate him with enthralling, visually stunning theatre, whether it was last year’s extremely original staging of Maria Irene Fornes’ “Mud” (another walkaround production, since the actors were encased…in, an, uhmmm, aquarium) to the recent “Elephant Man” where the naturalistic acting of the actor playing John Merrick was an ironic counterpoint to the expressionistic visual style (see my blog post on the show). His latest show, an over-the-top, very cutting, but thoroughly entertaining version of Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw”, currently running at the Court Theatre, is a must see. Joe Orton and Sean Graney together? Priceless.
“Butler” is a farce which subverts our understanding of what a farce should be like. Like traditional farce, the play has many absurd coincidences and improbabilities that snowball towards a ridiculous, almost unbelievable but “happy” ending, requires broad physical comedy among the actors, and has an abundance of witty quips and one-line back-and-forths. But unlike, say a Moliere or Feydeau play, “Butler” has a cynical worldview and presents sexual themes explicitly and voyeuristically. A psychiatrist seduces his naïve secretary and has her naked on his office couch, when his wife barges in unexpectedly. He tries to cover-up the deed (literally) and a succession of other colorful characters arrive at his office: a hotel bellhop with incriminating pictures of himself having sex with the psychiatrist’s wife, a zealous psychiatrist-colleague, and a police officer looking for the bellhop. Throw in crossdressing, male and female nudity, lots of booze, and a succession of mistaken and pretend identities (sort of like a typical party at my old apartment building in Boystown). The events become crazier and wackier until people get shot, incestuous relationships are revealed, and the police officer parachutes through the office skylight wearing a Garfield cat costume. “Butler” is zany, but Orton was also lashing out at the hypocrisy, self-absorbed cruelty, and pretension of the British educated class and authority figures. He was trying to cut them down to size. And Sean Graney, a talented director on the cusp of theatrical greatness, vividly illuminated that intention by having Dr. Rance, the zealous psychiatrist-colleague, and the police sergeant, the two characters in the play who pointedly represent educated class and authority figure respectively, act in the exaggeratedly broad style of traditional farce and the rest of the cast in a more subtle, more indirectly “farcical” style. The contrast was powerful- the insanity of these two characters, and their inability to acknowledge how insane they were, became more pronounced. And his actors, Joe Foust, as Dr. Rance, and Eric Slater, as the police officer, were terrific. So was the rest of the cast, especially Mary Beth Fisher, a wonderful Chicago actor who has also worked extensively in New York City, as the psychiatrist’s wife. The production values, as to be expected from the Court, was high-caliber, although, I was a little confused as to which time period the play was occurring in. Orton wrote “Butler” in 1968, but the play was not performed publicly till 1970, roughly two years after his death. The play at many times felt like it was period-specific, and then a cell phone, a Mac, and even Lionel Richie’s singing voice appeared out of nowhere, which begged the question, which year were we in again? A minor quibble though during a night of highly satisfying theatre.
“What the Butler Saw” runs at the Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Avenue, in the University of Chicago campus, until December 9. Please do a Southside excusion and see it. Also, check out “Prick Up Your Ears”, an interesting movie about the life of Joe Orton, with the great Gary Oldman as the playwright, and Alfred Molina as Kenneth Halliwell, his murderous lover.
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