What The Butler Saw
by Jo Orton
Directed by Annie Herridge
Libidos' run rampant in this comic farce about licensed insanity. From the moment when Dr Prentice, a psychoanalyst, instructs a prospective secretary to undress; this psychiatric clinic becomes a world of carnivalesque chaos where rampant mistaken identities, undressing and cross dressing add layer upon layer of mischievous confusion to this black comedy.
What the Butler Saw (a euphemism for an English ‘peep show’) was hailed as Orton’s masterpiece, and was his final play before being bludgeoned to death by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, back in 1967.
“ ….after 40 years this epic still has the power to shock….it is as outrageously and scandalously funny as ever.”
Soulpost
Synopsis
Life in post-invasion Iraq is dangerous - especially if you are young musicians trying to assemble an orchestra for a concert in bombed out Baghdad. When they invite an ancient musician from the city's once thriving Jewish community to conduct the orchestra, lives are put at risk. Is their faith in music enough to heal the fear and hate that is spreading through the city? SoulPost is inspired by stories told to Christine Aziz by Iraqi people during her visit to Baghdad immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Little Boy Synopsis
For his debut stage play, Hollywood screenwriter, John Foster, delves into the mind of the man who gave the all clear for the bombing of Hiroshima. Returning to America as a hero, Major Claude Eatherly realizes the full horror of what he has done. He turns bank robber to support Hiroshima’s victims. But it isn’t enough. There is only one way to atone...
But the thing that I saw in your face
No power can disinherit:
No bomb that ever burst
Shatters the crystal spirit.
~ by George Orwell, written in Autumn 1942