Theatre News

McInnerny, Bond & Moffett join Djalili in What the Butler Saw

Tim McInnerny, Samantha Bond and Georgia Moffett will join Omid Djalili in Joe Orton‘s 1967 comedy What the Butler Saw, which opens at the Vaudeville Theatre on 16 May 2012 (previews from 4 May).

The production, which will play a strictly limited season to 25 August 2012, is being directed by Sean Foley, who recently helmed the critically-acclaimed stage adaptation of The Ladykillers.

Tim McInnerny is best known for playing Lord Percy and Captain Darling in four series of Blackadder. His stage roles include Hamlet at the National Theatre, Frank N Furter and Iago and Judge Brack at Shakespeare’s Globe.

His many film roles include Notting Hill, 101 Dalmatians and 102 Dalmatians, Casanova, Severance and Johnny English Reborn.

Samantha Bond’s returns to the West End where she was most recently seen in An Ideal Husband at the Vaudeville. Her other recent credits include Arcadia at the Duke of York’s and Donkeys’ Years at the Comedy and King James readings at the National.

On film, she is best known for portraying Miss Moneypenny in several of the James Bond films and has been seen on television playing Lady Rosamund Painswick in Downton Abbey and Angela in Outnumbered.

Tim
McInnerny attends the 2012 Whatsonstage.com Awards. Photo credit: Dan
Wooller

Georgia Moffett’s television roles include Doctor Who, White Van Man and Merlin. On stage, she has appeared in Total Eclipse at the Menier Chocolate Factory and Getting Through at the Royal Court.

They are joined in the cast by Jason Thorpe (Absurd Person Singular, Leicester Curve, Nation, National) and Nick Hendrix who makes his West End debut with What the Butler Saw.

Orton’s final play, What the Butler Saw was first produced in 1969, two years after the author’s untimely death. In it, sex-obsessed psychiatrist Dr Prentice is frustrated in his attempts to seduce a secretary by the arrival of his nymphomaniac wife, over-enthusiastic inspector Dr Rance and a dim-witted policeman.

The new revival is being produced by MJE Productions, whose credits include the West End musical Ghost and the 2009 production of Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane starring Imelda Staunton and Mathew Horne.