Theatre - Sex may no longer shock, but a farce by Joe Orton still startles, writes Michael Portillo What the Butler Saw Hampstead Theatre, London NW3

The Lord Chamberlain's role as theatre censor ended in 1968, the year that audiences were first appalled or delighted by Hair, a musical featuring nudity. Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw, featuring cross-dressing and actors in their underwear, opened in 1969. But the real shock was a script that was largely about sex. There were noisy scenes on the play's opening night as those wanting to stop the performance competed with those enjoying the novelty and fun. Sir Ralph Richardson headed the cast, but could not hide his embarrassment at being involved.

The title refers to an Edwardian erotic peep-show. Orton's audience consists of voyeurs, invited to peer in on the private lives of apparently upstanding individuals. The play opens as a consultant psychiatrist, the image of a respectable citizen, persuades a pretty girl who has applied for secretarial work to strip naked. He is, understandably, nervous that his wife may interrupt them. When she does, it is to beg him to deal with a hotel bellboy with whom she spent the night, and who is now blackmailing her.

Joe Orton's final work is a finely constructed farce. It rivals the best of Oscar Wilde with its consistently witty dialogue, full of delightful surprises and paradoxes. Like Wilde, Orton was a master of satire. His targets in What the Butler Saw include religion, the government, psychiatry, heterosexuality and homosexuality.

David Grindley directs this highly successful revival at the Hampstead Theatre. He has taken to heart Orton's exhortation to play the material straight, rather than hamming it up. Grindley elicits a slick performance from his actors, with perfect timing in both the lines and - essential to any farce - the complicated comings and goings through four separate doors.

Jonathan Coy delivers a measured performance as Dr Prentice, the central figure of the play. It is his predicament, the elaborate consequence of his attempt to de-flower Miss Barclay (Joanna Page), that preoccupies us throughout the evening. Coy is suitably deadpan, but excels in the moments that have John Cleese written all over them, such as when he is repeatedly interrupted while trying to hide the secretary's underwear in a flower vase.

As Mrs Prentice, Belinda Lang gets many of the best lines (in the manner of a nymphomaniac Lady Bracknell) and copes admirably with a role that requires her to be by turns disdainful, lascivious and screechy.

In a strong cast, top marks go to Malcolm Sinclair as Rance, the senior doctor who arrives to inspect Prentice's work. He throws himself into the role with an intensity that he sustains through- out the evening. Each line is barked out with authority and a splendid appreciation of comic potential.

What the Butler Saw turns our assumptions about sanity and madness upside down. The characters who are most clearly compos mentis risk certification, while everyone defers to Rance, who hovers on the edge of insanity. He conjures diagnoses from thin air, and when patients contest his assertions he concludes that they are in denial. After one of his long flights of diagnostic fancy Prentice congratulates him on his theory, but asks whether it ties in with the known facts. The line might almost have been written with Professor Sir Roy Meadow in mind.

A play about sex may have lost its ability to shock, but Orton treats mental illness with a politically incorrect flippancy that still startles theatregoers today.

After all these years, What the Butler Saw remains painfully funny. The audience roars with laughter as the brilliant lines tumble out in quick succession. Orton is expert at confounding our expectations. "Were your relations with your secretary normal?" asks Rance. "Yes," replies Prentice. "Well, Prentice, your private life is your own affair. I find it shocking none the less." Later Rance promises Mrs Prentice: "Your sleep won't be disturbed tonight." "Life's full of disappointments," she retorts. Like a good footballer on the penalty spot, Orton never fails to send us the wrong way.

It is a manic piece of work, whose surrealism and energy grow as it nears its end. By a series of improbable coincidences, the true relationships between the characters are finally revealed. By then Rance has accused everyone of having sex with each other and, if only in one case, he is right.

Sadly, Orton did not live to see British theatre develop without the intrusions of the Lord Chamberlain. He was dead before What the Butler Saw was staged, killed by his lover Kenneth Halliwell a few days after he had completed the final draft of the play. The show opened only a year and a half later. He had, however, created a modern classic. This excellent revival displays it at its best.

Booking on 020 7722 9301 until 20 August

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