Word: lootings
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...Loot...
...farcical and savagely mocking of establishment values. Together with scandalous details (well, by early '60s standards anyway) of his life, such as his murder by his gay lover, Joe Orton's particular brand of theater seemed to be revolutionary and new. In the year 2000, however, the themes of Loot, with its homosexuality, constant digs at the Catholic-Protestant rivalry and even the portrayal of a highly dysfunctional family, no longer seem as radical or as ground-breaking...
This doesn't mean, however, that the American Repertory Theatre's performance of Loot can be sedate with Orton's story being what it is. At the funeral of Mrs. McLeavy, her son Harold and his gay lover Dennis, having robbed a bank, need a place to hide the money as the police chase after them. They stuff the body in a closet, but scheming nurse Fay (Laurie Williams) discovers their plan and demands to be a part of it. Throw in a shockingly ambivalent and corrupt police inspector Truscott (Jeremy Geidt), a series of farcical cover-ups and Orton...
...efforts of Geidt, whose Truscott really brings out the flavor of Orton's sardonic lines. Dismissing the corruption of the British police and his own ineptitude with the same casual deadpan manner, Geidt successfully conveys the amorality of Orton's society. And that really is the true genius of Loot: that devil-may-care attitude to any sense of right and wrong or to any constancy at all. None of the characters try too hard to hide their crimes, and they very readily confess it to whomever is interested. The gay lover, Dennis, as played by a very earnest...
Physical comedy was the order of the day in Loot, and particularly rib-tickling was Fay's confession to the murder of Mrs. McLeavy, with melodrama and cheesy music in full gear, and the sorrowful admission that "Euthanasia was against my religion. So I murdered her." Of course, Orton himself objected to the use of any camp in the original productions of his plays, but in modern times, when Orton's once unprecedented criticisms of societal values are no longer so, well, unprecedented, the actors need the energy of camp to let them rip into his lines. So while...