FOR those nurturing an enhanced view of the salacious 1960s, the anticipation of Canberra REP’s coming production of Joe Orton’s last play, “What the Butler Saw”, must be sheer delight.

For by the time of his savage murder at the hands of his lover, the actor Kenneth Halliwell in 1967, just after completing the play we’re about to see, Orton had produced an extraordinary list of eye-watering farces.

Nothing was sacred to this latter-day Oscar Wilde, as birth, death, marriage, education and the law all came under his witty, merciless eye.

It’s not the first time round for six-time REP director Liz Bradley, who staged Orton‘s “Entertaining Mr Sloane” and “What the Butler Saw” years ago for The Players Company at UC.

“‘What the Butler Saw’ cleaned up at the CAT Awards,” Bradley says, possible proof that the terrifying humour of the plays might still go down well with audiences.

“It’s very wordy, great for people who enjoy written words, but how it will go with the rest, I don’t know. But it’s lots of fun, I actually love it.

“The humour is wildly fantastic. Joe was an irresponsible young man and an astute observer… he’s having a go at the middle classes, but also at all levels of society.”

A Londoner through and through, he met Halliwell when they were students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and with him embarked upon a kind of a gay artistic spree, painting on toilet walls and drawing in library books, an offence for which they each got six months in jail, a time Orton later said “brought detachment to my writing. I wasn’t involved any more… And suddenly it worked.”

As he became flavour of the decade on the West End, Halliwell evidently got sick of it, Bradley notes. 

The earlier play “Entertaining Mr Sloane” had a more serious edge to it, more like a Pinter play in Bradley’s view, but with “Loot” and “What the Butler Saw”, two of the funniest plays ever written, his theatrical touch was sure, as he thumbed his nose at England’s social classes and mores.

Briefly, in the play the innocent Geraldine comes to a psychiatrist’s consulting room for a job as a receptionist, only to find her prospective boss, Dr Prentice, requires her to undress.

In the matter of French farce, Prentice’s wife appears, but she’s no angel either, having been seduced by Nicholas, a young bellhop.

Enter the government inspector, Dr Rance, who, after observing the mayhem, says he will use the situation he sees to develop a new book which will be full of “interest, buggery, outrageous women and Strangelove cults catering for depraved appetites – all the fashionable bric-a-brac”.

In other words, as well as satirising the abuse of power and the vagaries of bureaucracy, Orton is having a go at himself and the very conventions of the theatre. Much like Wilde.

Bradley and cast members David Cannell, Zoe Swan, Lainie Hart, Glenn Brighenti, Peter Holland and Thomas Hyslop are having a screamingly funny time but, and Bradley pulls herself up, “It’s got all the piss-take of farce, but farce is the hardest thing of all to get right and getting the timing is keeping us on our toes”.

Hardest of all, she reports, has been learning to play it straight. Without that, as the late Kenneth Williams found when he tried to send up Orton’s characters, “it just won’t work,” Bradley says.

“What the Butler Saw”, Canberra REP Theatre, 3 Repertory Lane, Acton, September 10 (preview) to September 26. Telephone bookings only, 10am-4pm, Monday-Friday, 6257 1950.