The Butler

It’s funny, it’s sexy, it’s visually stunning and it’s fiercely satirical. Inspired by Peter Greenaway’s film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, critics have called it Cirque du Soleil for grown-ups and Pinter on stilts. 

The central character of the butler presides over a bizarre 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 every social convention up to the pitch of parody and beyond.  Their dialogue consists of snippets, expressive of the shallowness of behavior, of the skull beneath the flesh.  Every trivial event - the taking of hats and coats, the saying of grace, the polite chit-chat, the serving of hours-d’oeuvres, expands by natural progression into grotesque and outrageous circus antics.

The resulting action is chaotic and delightful, but underlain 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.

The must-see show of 2010. Last chance to see it before its debut London season

“A raunchy and raucous show where circus and comedy collide…for once a standing ovation was not just appropriate it was necessary” Nelson Evening Mail

Contains nudity and explicit language, some content may offend

Performed by the Loons Circus Theatre Company
Written by Joe Bennett
Directed by Mike Friend