Los Angeles Times - Recommended
"..."What the Butler Saw" represents Orton at his most sophisticatedly silly. It's a play bursting with references to other plays, including even one of the greatest tragedies ever written, Euripides' "The Bacchae." Sad as it is to reflect on what this author might have gone on to accomplish had he not been cut down in his prime, the greatest tribute to his talent is that more than half a century later and far from merry old England he is still cracking up audiences."
LA Weekly - Somewhat Recommended
"...Under John Tillinger's direction, the production gleans a respectable number of laughs, but the wrenching hilarity spurred by the experience of spot-on farce is never attained."
LA Daily News - Recommended
"...This production is aided by an absolutely splendid cast whose timing - thanks in part to director John Tillinger - proves so tight that every bit of physical comedy works exactly as it should, and whose characterizations allow for just enough empathy to keep the audience connected."
Broadway World - Recommended
"...This may not be the best Butler I have seen, but with Joe Orton's keen dialogue and the actors' sturdy efforts to keep up the pace, it is still one helluva a laugh-filled entertainment. Time has killed some of the humor, though, as cable TV with its crude, raucous manner of portraying sex and violence – where nothing is left to the imagination – has certainly lived up to Joe Orton's visions. He was surely ahead of his time."
Edge - Recommended
"...Director John Tillinger and a crackerjack cast ensure that the escalating insanity is as uproarious as it is unashamedly implausible - in other words, superior farce. Orton was a master at piling on unexpected complications that ensure an abundance of slapstick. In the hands of Tillinger's skilled direction, the cast is pitch-perfect and the madness is infectious as it builds to crescendos of hilarity."
The Hollywood Reporter - Recommended
"...Tillinger delivers the inspirational nuttiness the play demands. He guides his cast seamlessly through precisely-timed entrances and exits, rhetorically-twisted and logic-impaired verbal exchanges, drugs, alcohol, lust and nudity, making it all appear part of the natural flow of things around the rural sanitarium where the action unfolds."
LA Splash - Recommended
"...While the shear volume of rape and incest jokes employed in Orton's play is a bit disturbing at times, at its core is a harmless romp of six silly characters on a collision course with the truth. The twists and turns of this Joe Orton comedy will keep you on your toes until its elaborate, yet ultimately satisfying ending."
Stage Scene LA - Recommended
"...The excellent cast, led by Britons Paxton Whitehead, Charles Shaughnessy and Frances Barber, is as well equipped for this demanding stuff as one could wish. Still, it is a farce, and one does wish the doors on James Noone's pretty set were not so far apart, and that the actors would open them faster and slam them harder. But if the show does not fly, neither does it lag. It is a well-informed, well-acted, well-designed approximation of the revolutionary reek still bursting from Orton's grave. Most importantly, it is funny. It proves that the theater remains a fine venue for social protest, provided that entertainment is a means to agenda, and not the other way around."
Examiner - Recommended
"...Joe Orton's "What the Butler Saw," with a liberal splash of the Marx Brothers and a soupçon of Oscar Wilde, is farce at its witty, wacky and edgy best. Directed with aplomb by Orton expert John Tillinger, the wickedly funny show opened Sunday, November 23, 2014 to a very appreciative audience."
Campus Circle - Recommended
"..."What the Butler Saw" is full of great actors and British humor that provides hearty laughs. Just don't bring any kids with you to the theater for this one."
Neon Tommy - Recommended
"...Don't bring kids to this one. The Mark Taper Forum's raucous production of Joe Orton's "What the Butler Saw" delivers everything that you would expect of a classic, low-brow British farce done at an esteemed Los Angeles theatre… and so much more."
TheatreMania - Recommended
"...While most farce is frivolous, Orton's is subversive - not merely fast-paced, but anarchic. Morality standards have evolved since the play first opened, but as evidenced by the production at the Mark Taper Forum, this hilarious comedy has lost no steam."
Culture Vulture - Somewhat Recommended
"...All in all, John Tillinger's direction is tight. The Taper stage does not exactly reproduce the feeling of an examining room or a doctor's office, but it hardly seems important. "What the Butler Saw" is certainly entertaining, but will it last as a mark of great theater? That remains to be seen. Are you going to remember it a month from now? My bet is no."
Total Theater - Recommended
"...To be successful, farce depends not only on hyper-fast action (and skillful juggling of plot twists) but a cast skilled at making the anarchy seem real. The six actors in What the Butler Saw are certainly up to the challenge; led by the masterful work of Frances Barber (a classically trained British actress), they keep the action moving and the audience laughing from start to finish."
Huffington Post - Recommended
"...Orton draws on everything from commedia dell'arte to British vaudeville and French farce in constructing this rapid-fire farce. Director Tillinger grabs this tiger by the tail and rides it for all its worth, never backing down from the high-strung, door-slamming tone. The performances are outstanding."
LA Downtown News - Recommended
"...No one knows what Orton would have thought once his play was staged, but What the Butler Saw is hardly an example of an unrealized work. It's complete, it's funny, it's relevant and it's worthy of this revival."
Cultural Weekly - Not Recommended
"...British humor does not always ring bells with American audiences. At the performance I attended, some seats were left empty after intermission. The play needs the rewriting that it did not get. Frenzy is part of comedy, certainly, and while this may sound like a contradiction, that frenzy also should be clearer, shorter and, in this case, sharper in its execution than it is."
Showmag - Recommended
"...Orton's comedy still provides audience with some food for thought and an appreciation of the facility with which he builds his overlapping plot twists. 45 years later it amuses and provides a vehicle for some fine talent."
L&L Magazine - Somewhat Recommended
"...As a production, it's competent. The requisite multiple doors all there; the physical comedy realized if not inspired; the direction and acting hits all the necessary marks."
