Customer Reviews

Butley (Modern Plays)

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I saw Nathan Lane in Simon Gray's "Butley" on Broadway on January 6, 2007. The Playbill has a caricature of a very somber, ravaged, disconsolate Ben Butley on the cover. Lane, perfectly cast, gave an excellent performance, but I left the theater feeling downhearted after experiencing Ben, a self-loathing, selfish, and nasty university professor who treats everyone to a taste of his vile nature. In the space of a few hours he loses two people close to him, his wife Anne and his academic colleague and lover Joey, both of whom have mistakenly loved him.
The audience sees a man who can be funny, sardonic, wickedly vindictive, and a sorry and miserable excuse for a human being. He loves to deflate people with his devastating insults; he gets his kicks out of being malicious. He's too bright for his own good. The dialogue, often hilarious, is worth the price of admission, but watching the disintegration of a despicable man can be very trying.
Joey says, "You spread futility, Ben. It creeps in like your dirty socks do."
This play had its first performance in 1971. Simon Gray died at 71 in August of 2008.
Well-constructed and clever, the play observes the unities of time and place, has funny lines, but the title character is a nasty piece of work, too much of a bad thing for an afternoon or evening of theatergoing.

Back in the 70s, I saw the film starring Alan Bates; a few years ago I saw the play starring Nathan Lane. It's hard for me to imagine how I would have reacted to reading this play without Alan Bates in mind. Suffice it to say that "Butley" the film is still my favorite movie and Bates is still my favorite actor (despite his death in 2003); it would be very different if all I had seen was Nathan Lane's version. Much as I like Lane, his Butley was superficial and clownish, while Bates brought out the cleverness, vulnerability, anguish, and frustration of a brilliant literature professor losing control of his life. Read the play, see the movie. (I bought the VCR tape before I had a VCR player; I now have two copies of the DVD. There are new insights every time I watch.)

Like Prometheus bound to a rock in Aeschylus's tragedy, Ben Butley is bound to his office as a series of messengers from his personal life appear to give him bad news. Butley may be too sloshed, too witty, and too careless about his love life for his own good, but out of all the noisy self destruction you can hear strains of genuine concern, faintly for his child and clearly for literature. Readers of the play will get more out of it if they know something about poetry: a little of Robert Herrick, John Milton, John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace; more of Beatrix Potter (especially "Diggory Diggory Delvet," "Apply Dappley," and "Ninny Nanny Netticoat"), and especially of T.S. Elliot's "Marina." Some familiarity with British class prejudices will also help. But the play is bitingly funny even without all the Anglo-context. It makes an excellent choice for English course syllabi so long as bisexuality and homosexuality won't distract student readers. The brilliant American Film Theater version of the play (available on DVD) features Alan Bates in his finest role.

Many contemporary plays and films try to tackle the image of the university and the professor, but few succeed in really giving you the flavor of this odd group of overeducated professionals. Butley gives you the horrid little truth about what Professor Van Voris of Smith College once called "the world's _second oldest profession_." Alchoholism, homophobia, and a genuine fear of students haunt this acid, funny, and yet somehow deeply sad book about a professor of English, his untenured protege and others. A must read for anyone interested in the weird sad little world of academia.