The Butler
Dates: 2006 - 2010
Written by Joe Bennett
Directed by Mike Friend
The Butler is like nothing else. It’s a Big Top spectacular and intimate social satire. It’s bitter, it’s beautiful and it’s full of hilarious humour.
Inspired by the Peter Greenaway film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, The Butler takes a hard look at the social manners and conventions of western culture, with often bizarre results.
The central character of the butler presides over a dinner party. He stands apart from the action having seen and heard it all before. In counterpoint to The Butler’s gloom, the dinner party guests are all exuberance. Brittle as biscuits, they wind up every social convention to the pitch of parody and beyond.
The resulting action is chaotic and delightful, but underscored with an emptiness that the characters must defy. Here is the froth and bubble above the dark and the stark. It’s like nothing seen before but it is instantly recognisable.
It’s sexy, it’s stunning to look at, and it’s very, very funny. It’s The Butler. Where circus meets theatre and satire holds a mirror up to the middle class.
“For once, a standing ovation was not just appropriate; in this case it was necessary.”
Tom Hunt, Nelson Mail
“In a word: magnificent.”
Matt Richens, Theatreview
Original Cast
Pascal Ackermann
Skye Broberg
Sophie Ewert
David Ladderman
Jola and Nele Siezen
Daniel Lee Smith
Tom Trevella