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NEW YORK ( madly antic humor of Joe Orton crackles through his posthumous "What the Butler Saw," at off-Broadway's McAlpin Rooftop Theater.

With slapdash, impertinence, puns and those inverted witticisms perfected by Wilde and Coward, for more elegant capers, the raffish Orton aims as usual at the morally smug.

The consulting room of an exclusive psychiatric clinic is the scene for a farcical farrago of identity mixups in the course of which the cast, with ribald abandon, uncovers absurdities of existence while stripping down to discreetly minimal attire.

The story, filled with mad twists that in themselves are a. caustic comment on everyday life starts with a doctor's interrupted seduction of a nubile job-seeker when his errant wife unexpectedly returns from a coven of lesbian witches. The mood is set.

Before the stage lights finally go out, all the varieties of bedroom behavior have been laughingly examined, along with the medical profession, religion, police and British political idealism.

go-go gorge

By William Glover

"You must tell the truth," the badgered young brunette pleads at one point, to which the retort must be, "That is a thoroughly defeatist attitude."

Orton lets the rondelay run on too long, but his over-all tone is mellowed from the acerbic anti-Establishment fervor of such earlier pieces as "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" and "Loot." This is mostly laughter for its own sake.

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Director Joseph Hardy handles the split-second needs of the farcical structure with imaginative dash.

The cast includes Laurence Luckinbill as a frantic clinic head; Lucian Scott, a madness in the surroundingsuper-analyst who sees basic sanity; Jan Farrand and Diana Davila, mature and youthful temptation; Charles Murphy and Tom. Rosqui as a bellboy and cop to to complete the complica-

tions. Orton humor isn't for everyone, but for those who dig the eccentricity, "What the Butler Saw" is a go-go.