An Unfortunate Confirmation

THEATER CRITICS HAVE found it rewarding recently to bemoan the lack of innovative, intriguing, entertaining, or even humorous dramatic productions. Unfortunately, Dunster House's production of Joe Orton's What the Butler Sawdoes nothing to challenge this prevalent conception of the state of contemporary theater.

Set in the office of mousey psychiatrist Dr. Prentice (David Natzler), the play juggles the three recurrent themes of sex, madness and mistaken identity in a farcical manner which grows tedious before the close of the first act.

The play opens with Dr. Prentice preparing to physically examine a prospective secretary, Geraldine Barclay (Susie Fisher). "I wish to see what effect your stepmother's death had upon your legs," he tells her, but his examination is interrupted by his nymphomaniac wife (blatantly portrayed by Deborah Marie Hayes) and one of her pursuers, a bellboy played by Michael Blau.

The four of them then play cat and mouse for a time. Miss Barclay is forced to hide every time Mrs. Prentice enters the room. Mrs. Prentice discovers and confiscates Miss Barclay's dress so that the latter is forced to remain in hiding. The bellboy hides when Dr. Prentice enters and Dr. Prentice--appearing crazier and crazier as the evening progresses--endeavors to conceal Miss Barclay, her underwear and his own true motives and actions.

This continues uninterrupted for a while, until a new character is brought in to complicate the already frenetic interactions. Her Majesty's representative for mental health, Dr. Rance (Andrew Brooks) has been sent to evaluate Dr. Prentice and with the help of one more character, a policeman, succeeds only in complicating matters beyond the point of tedium.

Miss Barclay dresses up as the bellboy, the bellboy dresses up as Miss Barclay and then as the policeman, and Dr. Rance displays his psychiatric knowledge by pronouncing everyone mad who attempts to explain their versions of what is happening. "I'm not interested in your explanations," he tells them, "I can provide my own."

The six actors handle the slapstick humor with great dexterity, but despite these generally competent performances, the play's humor--which is all it really has to offer--comes off lamely. The depths to which this humor repeatedly falls is demonstrated in a conversation between the nymphomaniac Mrs. Prentice, and the inspecting psychiatrist, Dr. Rance. After Mrs. Prentice informs the Doctor that a pageboy in a local hotel tried to rape her, he asks her if the boy succeeded. She replies in the negative and the doctor responds "Well, the service in those hotels is terrible."

THE VACUITY OF such dialogue can lead only to boredom or criticism. Miss Hayes, although convincing in her role, insists on moving about the stage not fluidly but solely in a series of jerky motions. Mr. Brookes's prime acting mechanism is his repertoire of grossly exaggerated facial contortions, which tend to detract from rather than enhance his overall performance.

The one promising satirical subject in the psychiatric setting of What the Butler Saw is the question of who is sane and who is insane. Yet even this is rarely treated above the superficial level. To be sure, the two psychiatrists do compulsively attempt to classify each character as mad, but their attempts are so continuous and so blatant that the humor emerges as tired while the satire is so overdone that it becomes irrelevant.

The psychiatric profession deserves to have its motives and prejudices called in to question, but What the Butler Saw succeeds neither in this nor in producing a genuinely entertaining evening. Great effort was obviously put into this production; it is too bad that the final product is not more rewarding.