'Butler' serves up farce

Richard McElvain and Meg Gibson in Joe Orton's "What the Butler Saw." (Jim Dalglish)

WELLFLEET - Absurdity with a political edge: What could be better for a summer production at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater? So it's easy to see how "What the Butler Saw," Joe Orton's farce-with-a-bite, landed on this season's schedule - especially when it's directed by David Wheeler and was to feature Max Wright.

Alas, Wright left the production, and while Richard McElvain gamely stepped in, the show - at least in its opening week - is not quite running at full speed. In the pivotal role of Dr. Rance, the unflappably unbalanced inspector of an insane asylum that's almost as crazy as he is, McElvain has some truly hilarious moments. But he is also just settling into the part, and there are enough fluffed lines and hesitations to throw off the timing of the whole thing.

The good news is that McElvain, fine and experienced comic actor that he is, will surely find his way in short order. And, in the meantime, he's surrounded by a vivid cast of fellow conspirators in the faintly subversive business of presenting a bitter political commentary disguised as a sex romp.

Under Wheeler's expert direction, they strike the right balance of utterly ridiculous behavior and utterly serious demeanor. They also manage to get across Orton's farcical humor while never losing sight of his larger idea, that the British society of his time is madder than any madhouse.

The two women in the cast, Meg Gibson and Lordan Napoli, do a particularly fine job of presenting an escalating series of absurd occurrences with a straight face. Napoli plays poor Geraldine Barclay, a dim secretarial candidate whose job interview with the asylum's director, Dr. Prentice, takes a quick and irreversible turn into the absurd when he asks her to take off her clothes. Gibson, meanwhile, plays Dr. Prentice's "nymphomaniac" wife. Both women are funny not just because they're increasingly hysterical, but because they remain blithely unaware of just how hysterical they are.

As Dr. Prentice, Michael Balcanoff occasionally seems a little too much in on the joke; he'd be more amusing to us if he were a little less amusing to himself. But as the interplay between the two doctors finds its rhythm, Balcanoff will probably relax into a more understated tone. Meanwhile, Lewis D. Wheeler and Adam Harrington offer hilarious support as a rakish bellhop and a sobersided policeman, respectively - and both of them look just lovely in Mrs. Prentice's leopard-print dress.

Kudos to costume designer Carol Sherry for that hideous '60s concoction, as well as for the other pop classics she's conjured up. Sound designer Nathan Leigh heightens the mood with his own pop finds, while Eugene Lee's set is at once an appropriately drab clinical setting and a versatile, door-slamming stage for the decidedly un-drab goings-on.

In short, WHAT has assembled all the elements of a lively evening. Now it just needs time to gel.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.