Word: looted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...problem in these cases. If you are asked who Orton is, you had better be ready with information: he was a homosexual, a British playwright killed in a ritual hammer slaying in 1967. What comes up second when Orton's name is mentioned is the fact that he wrote Loot, Entertaining Mr. Sloane and several other black comedies. Loot, you see, has a corpse for its focus, just as Orton's life, ironically and grotesquely, had in the final tally a corpse (his own) as the basis of the public's grasp of what he was and had been...
Given the quirky necrophilia which taints Orton's reputation, I can be excused for writing a review which is actually an obituary. The Loeb Ex last week presented a very interesting production of Orton's Loot. In case you didn't see this play in that tomb-like barn of a theater, you should be reminded that the Loeb Ex is very much alive as a casual, but uncommonly vigorous forum for amateur theatrics. And this particular Loeb Ex company did an admirable job making Orton's coruscating wit work to its full potential as entertainment...
...McCleavey's body is on display in the parlor of her house, until her son Hal and his friend the undertaker Dennis, who have just stolen a pile of "loot," decide to hide her corpse in a cabinet and to bury in her coffin, with full Roman Catholic death rites, the money they want to hide. Truscott, a Scotland Yard sleuth on the trail of Fay, a nurse who has poisoned Mrs. McCleavey and killed seven successive husbands in one decade, appears on the scene, calls himself the Water Commissioner Inspector, and ferrets out clues about Mrs. McCleavey's death...
...first act of Loot was extremely funny; the equally clever machinations in act two seemed pallid and a bit too taciturn by comparison. This can be attributed to the dulling of one's ability to be shocked, when the same sort of ludicrous out-rage is repeated again and again. Sex and religion, which rank after death as targets of Orton's jesting, also reach a point of diminishing returns after the first machine-gun fire of jokes. Lines such as "God is a gentleman. He prefers blonds," or Truscott's "I wasn't expecting pharaohs" to Hal's cowering...
...many of these self-indulgent gimmicks, and for that reason, Orton deserves praise for his cleverness in handling gruesome material; especially his use of double-entendres to remind his audience that lust and filthy lucre stand behind every moral platitude. Excessive length and repetitiveness are the major drawbacks Loot has as a play, but a failure of momentum must, inevitably, hobble black comedy unless a compelling basis for suspense gives coherence to the dramatic situation. Case in point: Secret Ceremony, listless, enervated; Pale Fire, taut, compelling...