Word: orton
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...point of the late Joe Orton's play Loot-not the only point, but a prominent one-was outrageous and exhilarating bad taste. Director Silvio Narizzano, no stranger to bad taste himself (Georgy Girl, Blue), changes Orton's cyanide cocktail into a fey demolition derby...
...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 outcry "Mummy!" are slipshod lapses...
...SCRIPT is not flawed with too 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...
John Paul Russo as Truscott gave an amusing, intelligence performance, but I single out that character for special attention because Truscott stands for one of many loose ends which Orton failed to tie together in writing this play, and perhaps the most interesting one-his satirical, warped vision of bureaucratic authority. Truscott tyrannizes the old widower Mr. McCleavey in his own home by searching where and when he pleases, and threatening to cut off the water supply. When Anthony Mowbray, heavily made up as the old McCleavey, asks Truscott by what right he does all this, Russo lifts his eyes...
...dead apart and turn them upside down in locked cabinets and carry their stiff corpses around in our arms as the characters in Loot do, we might all find release from the hold of death in our minds. For as objects, in silk-lined strong-boxes, our bodies, as Orton sees them, are interchangeable and not so much contemptible as laughable. Joe Orton in some uncanny way realized that to make death at once funny and a fact was the best way to keep it from defining our existence. At Orton's funeral, Donald Pleasance paid him a tribute...