Was der Butler sah

In the organizer's words:

Outrageous things are happening in the clinic rooms of Dr. Prentice's private psychiatric ward. A job interview with his future secretary, Geraldine, takes on questionable overtones when she is asked to undress in order to have her qualifications checked. Out of nowhere, his wife Mrs. Prentice suddenly appears, in desperate need of a drink after a clandestine rendezvous with bellboy Nick Beckett from the station hotel. He now wants to blackmail her with explicit photos. Meanwhile, a commissioner and a state inspector appear, each with their own questions to ask in the unfolding chaos. A daring chase ensues in which neither the right piece of clothing nor the right sex will lead to an answer. Finally, it all ends with Winston Churchill's penis.

"What the Butler Saw" is probably Joe Orton's most ambitious play, a masterclass in manic farce and fearlessly comic writing. Orton, who lived openly as a gay man in Britain in the 1960s, always struggled with the pathologization of his sexuality. Orton not only wrote against traditional bourgeois moral concepts, but always set out in his plays in search of the libidinous in people. With this enormously funny and bitterly evil text, Schauspiel Darmstadt is launching a Joe Orton trilogy to rediscover the work of this unjustly rarely performed exceptional author.