What the Butler Saw
by Joe Orton
State Theatre Company
Playhouse
Joe Orton’s plays are not everybody’s cup of tee hee. There is humour that confirms our sense of the world and there is humour which unsettles it and Orton is definitely the latter. His comedy, all elliptical word play and glassy epigrams, has the mannered artificiality of Wilde. But unlike Oscar, Orton is not endearing. His is pitiless, unlikeable comedy and when he makes you laugh it often sticks …
Continue Reading Back to top1992
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore
John Ford
State Theatre Company
Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Simon Phillips’ season of classics in tandem, -Elizabethan and Jacobean, comedy and tragedy, dream and nightmare- is an ambitious one. It is physically demanding on actors, tricky to design and difficult to publicise. More than just works in repertory, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore have been joined at the hip, or more likely …
Continue Reading Back to top1992
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore
John Ford
State Theatre Company
Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Simon Phillips’ season of classics in tandem, -Elizabethan and Jacobean, comedy and tragedy, dream and nightmare- is an ambitious one. It is physically demanding on actors, tricky to design and difficult to publicise. More than just works in repertory, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore have been joined at the hip, or more likely …
Continue Reading Back to top