"Joe Orton's last play, What the Butler Saw, will live to be accepted as a comedy classic of English literature" (Sunday Telegraph) The chase is on in this breakneck comedy of licensed insanity, from the moment when Dr Prentice, a psychoanalyst interviewing a prospective secretary, instructs her to undress. The plot of What the Butler Saw contains enough twists and turns, mishaps and changes of fortune, coincidences and lunatic logic to furnish three or four conventional comedies. But however the six characters in search of a plot lose the thread of the action - their wits or their clothes - their verbal self-possession never deserts them. Hailed as a modern comedy every bit as good as Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Orton's play is regularly produced, read and studied. What the Butler Saw was Orton's final play."He is the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility" (Observer)

What the Butler Saw

Literature & Fiction

Joe Orton

Dramas & Plays

Samuel. French

This play charts the dramatic events leading to the execution of Sir Thomas More in 1535 and has been a modern stage classic since its first production in 1960. The author's previous plays include 'Flowering Cherry' and 'State of Revolution'.

A Man for All Seasons

BOLT, Robert

The Real Thing

The play begins with Max and Charlotte, a couple whose marriage seems about to rupture. But nothing one sees on a stage is the real thing, and some things are less real than others. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage by her husband, Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie. Both marriages are at the point of rupture because Henry and Annie have fallen in love. But is it the real thing?In The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard combines his characteristically brilliant wordplay and wit with flashes of insight that illuminate the nature--and the mystery--of love, creating a multi-toned play that challenges the mind while searching out the innermost secrets of the heart.

Stoppard, Tom.

These plays cover a range of disasters appalling enough to turn any show into a coarse one. A Fish in Her Kettle by David Pearson; Present Slaughter by Jane Dewey and Don Starkey; The Vagabond Prince by Simon Brett with music and lyrics by John Gould; Stalag 69 by Michael Green and Julius and Cleopatra by Michael Green.|Large flexible cast

The Third Great Coarse Acting Show

GREEN, MICHAEL

Cowbois

Charlie Josephine

King Lear French's Acting Edition

William. Shakespeare

The ultimate amoral "swinger", Alfie swaggers and philosophizes his way through a parade of 'birds' in 1960's London, allowing the audience to eavesdrop as he goes. When one carefree entanglement proves too close for even Alfie's comfort, the "swinger" lands with a thud. A hit in London, this story became a classic film that made a star of Michael Caine as the title cad.

Alfie - A Play

NAUGHTON, Bill

Genre Fiction

Meet three couples in their three kitchens on the Christmas Eves of three successive years. The "lower class" but very much up and coming Hopcrofts are in their bright new, gadget filled kitchen anxiously giving a little party for their bank manager and his wife and an architect neighbor. Next there are the architect and his wife in their neglected, untidy flat. Then the bank manager and his wife are in their large, slightly modernized, old Victorian style kitchen. Running like a dark thread through the wild comedy of behind the scenes disasters at Christmas parties is the story of the advance of the Hopcrofts to material prosperity and independence and the decline of the others. In the final stages the little man is well and truly on top, with the others, literally and unnervingly, dancing to his tune.

Absurd Person Singular - A Play

AYCKBOURN, Alan

Goldberg and McCann arrive at a seaside boarding house where Meg and Petey live with their guest Stanley. They inquire about Stanley: we soon find out that McCann and Goldberg have a job to do. Learning it is his birthday they give Stanley a party at which Stanley is verbally bludgeoned into submission. The next day Stanley is removed. It is the collective impact of the dialogue which welds they seemingly inexplicable actions of Goldberg and McCann into a menacing whole.

The Birthday Party - A Play

PINTER, HAROLD

Notting Hill Gate, London. A sinister con man and two ex-convicts are about to meet their match. They have traced the location of a mysterious doll to the home of Sam Henderson and his blind wife, Susy and set about trying to retrieve it. They start an elaborate scam to persuade Susy to hand it over, but Susy, it seems, is no easy target. Wait Until Dark, made into a film starring Audrey Hepburn in 1967, is often ranked as one of the top 100 scariest films of all time.|2 women, 6 men

Wait Until Dark

Knott, Frederick

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Books by Samuel. French