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'Loveable' isn't the word one automatically reaches for when describing playwright Joe Orton's anarchic oeuvre. But 'Ladykillers' director Sean Foley has turned 'What the Butler Saw', an assault on the establishment set in a psychiatric clinic, into something almost winsome.
It's no bad thing: Orton's 42-year-old farce, which savages buttoned-up British arrogance, couldn't be used to beat the touchy feely leaders of today. Instead, Foley's fine cast play it as a surreal '60s screwball romp. This revival fizzes and skids over Orton's subversive intentions, yet retains some bite via his dazzlingly caustic lines ('a failure in eugenics, combined with a taste for alcohol and sexual intercourse, makes it most undesirable that she become a mother').
Tim McInnerny retains our sympathy remarkably well as the increasingly bewildered psychiatrist Dr Prentice, whose efforts to cover up his attempted seduction of new secretary Geraldine (Georgia Moffett) from his wife Mrs Prentice (Samantha Bond) spiral catastrophically out of control, exacerbated by the unexpected arrival of Omid Djalili's unhinged government autocrat Dr Rance.
Bond is also excellent, deftly progressing from oversexed termagant to charmingly dazed everydrunk. Both bring a heart and humanity to the characters that is not necessarily there on the page – actually being able to like them helps us through Foley's cuddlier take on the play.
Djalili barks out Rance's plum lines with consummate stand up's skill but, chucklesome as his mad scientist shtick is, he doesn't fashion a coherent character out of it. Rance (and a certain broken effigy of Winston Churchill's manhood) represent the rotten, callous establishment, but this production does not rail against them, meaning we don't have enough invested in the play's convoluted climax for it to reach critical comic mass.
Foley has house trained 'What the Butler Saw' so that it sits comfortably in the West End alongside younger, better-behaved farces 'One Man, Two Guvnors' and 'Noises Off'. He has created an easy enjoyable evening. But the disconnect between Orton's savage play and this frothy revival stops it from ever quite finding top gear.