Omid Djalili to star in Joe Orton farce

Omid Djalili is to star in a new West End production of Joe Orton’s comedy What the Butler Saw.

The comic, who has just completed a major stand-up tour, will take to the stage of London’s Vaudeville Theatre from May 4.

Djalili plays Dr Rance, a government inspector who calls at a psychiatric Clinic just as sexual farce is being played out.

It is being directed by Sean Foley, whose credits include the Morecambe and Wise tribute The Play What I Wrote, and produced by the same company behind the 2009 revival of Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane, starring Mathew Horne.

What The Butler Saw, Orton’s last play, was completed a month before his 1967 death and first staged in London at the Queen’s Theatre in 1969 – when Ralph Richardson took the role of Dr Rance.