“What the Butler Saw” a comedy of manners gone haywire

SUFFIELD — First of all, don’t expect to see a butler in the Suffield player’s production of “What the Butler Saw.” There isn’t one.
Written by Joe Orton, this door-slamming, clothes-shedding, gun-toting roller coaster ride of a play is a biting social commentary disguised as a black comedy of the highest order.
Evidently the term “what the butler saw” is an English slang reference to peeking through keyholes, or voyeurism, something the audience is voluntarily participating in. Probably not the best comedy for kids — not so much for the language but for the subject matter.
Set in a psychiatric clinic consulting room somewhere in England, the play begins with Dr. Prentice, played by a Bob-Newhart like Dana T. Ring, leeringly interviewing a potential secretary, Geraldine Barclay, played with doe-eyed innocence by Rayah Martin.
Ring is soft-spoken and sometimes difficult to hear, especially when the mood-setting music overwhelms him.
When Barclay says she can’t recall having a father, Prentice says that he can’t employee her if she is “in any way miraculous,” and so sets the tone for the ensuing shenanigans.
In walks Dr. Prentise’s simultaneously oversexed and under-responsive wife, played with confidence by Dorrie Mitchell and her one-night lover and subsequent blackmailer, who happens to take great shorthand, Nicholas Beckett, played energetically by Steve Wandzy.
Prentice says to his wife that she is so over-sexed that when she is buried, it will have to be in a Y-shaped coffin, and later says, “all appearances to the contrary, she is harder to get into than the British Public Library.”
As if this weren’t enough craziness, next arrives the fully certifiable government official, Dr. Rance, played by Bruce Showalter. Showalter steals the show when he is on stage with his gleefully insane circuitous logic and singularly over-active imagination.
At one point he tells Dr. Prentice there is no need to give him explanations, “I can supply my own.” At another he speaks of a psychiatrist he once knew as someone, “having failed to achieve madness himself, he took to teaching it to others.”
The play is a fabulous fantastical comeuppance to our crazy world. Orton was clearly influenced by Oscar Wilde in this comedy of manners gone haywire.
When under cross-examination by Dr. Rance, Barclay vehemently denies being molested as a child by her father, but Rance is undeterred, gleefully proclaiming that her energetic denial is proof-positive it happened.
Even the institution of public safety is lacerated when the dazed and confused Sgt. Match, well played by Larry Chiz, enters the action, attempting to arrest Nick, euphemistically charging Nick of “misconducted himself” with a group of school girls in a hotel where he works.
While the dialog is spat-out with machine-gun precision, the action, with plenty of door slamming and clothes flying off and on, is also precise and imaginative, with admirable direction by Philip Vetro.
Come and surrender to a night of hilarious black humor with an unexpected, twisted ending at the Suffield Players darkly delirious production of “What the Butler Saw.”

WHAT THE BUTLER SAW

3 Stars
Location: Mapleton Hall, 1305 Mapleton Ave. Suffield.
Production: Written by Joe Orton. Directed by Philip Vetro. Stage managed by Becky Schoenfeld. Costumes designed by Dawn McKay. Set Design by Konrad Rogowski. Lighting design by Jerry Zalewski.
Running time: 2 hours, plus a 15-minute intermissions.
Show Times: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. through May 16.
Tickets: $17, $15 for seniors and students. Call 1-800-289-6148 of visit their website at www.suffieldplayers.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Dana T. Ring … Dr. Prentice
Rayah Martin … Geraldine Barclay
Dorrie Mitchell … Mrs. Prentice
Steve Wandzy … Nicholas Beckett
Bruce Showalter … Dr. Rance
Larry Chiz … Sergeant Match