Butley [antikvár]

BUTLEY First staged at the Criterion Theatre in 1971, Butley is a play about a university lecturer, Ben Butley, who shares his office and his flat with a former star pupil, Joey, now also a teacher. On the day when the play takes place Butley faces both the ultimate breakdown of his marriage and of his intense friendship with Joey. Butley's painful discoveries are made against a background of petty university politics and unease about student dissent. He greets them with a blistering torrent of repartee and rhetoric. 'Butley . . could well join that distinguished gallery of human debris represented by Willie Loman, Jimmy Porter and Bill Maitland in post-war drama. . . . What is so wondrous about a play so basically defeatist and hurtful is its ability to be funny. The stark, unsentimental approach to the homosexual relationship, the cynical send-up of academic life, the sceptical view of the teacherpupil associations are all stunningly illuminated by continuous explosions of sardonic, needling, feline, vituperative and civilised lines. Milton Shulman in the Evening Standard. The photograph on the front of the cover shows Alan Bates and Richard O'Callaghan in a scene from the Criterion production and is reproduced by courtesy of John Haynes. The photograph on the back of the cover is reproduced by courtesy of Beryl Gray.