What is the theme in What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton?

Madness, psychiatry, and authority are themes in the book. Orton prefaces What the Butler Saw with a quotation from The Revenger's Tragedy: "Surely we're all mad people, and they/Whom we think are, are not." The perception of madness and, consequently, who is mad, is central to Orton's play. In the twentieth century, it is given to psychiatrists to answer this question. Although many may question psychiatric methods, it is nonetheless the case that psychiatrists have been given the legal authority to determine who is mad and, consequently, to commit those so diagnosed to psychiatric hospitals, to force them to take medications, and even to submit to electroshock therapy.