Loot

Saw the second preview of Joe Orton's Loot, produced by Soulpepper at their lovely theatre in the Discovery District.

Orton had a brief life and career, but he blossomed in England in the mid-Sixties with with edgy, outrageous, provocative plays like Entertaining Mr. Sloane and What the Butler Saw. Loot is an outrageous farce about two young men who rob a bank and hide the money in the coffin of the mother of one of the men. The mother died at the hands of her nurse, who is angling to marry the dead woman's husband (she had previously married--and killed--several husbands). And then there's the unscrupulous, genius-in-his-own-mind police inspector--who pretends he's from the water board so as to search the premises without a warrant.

The production is well designed and performed; my problem was with the play itself. Weirdly, I think the world today is so freaky that it's actually caught up with Orton's outrageousness, rendering it somewhat tame.

Positive reviews for Loot in the Globe and Star. I, myself, was less taken with the show. I saw the second preview, and perhaps things changed somewhat, but I doubt it. The problem for me was that the show doesn't date well. (In the Star's review, the opening sentance is: "The wonderful thing about British playwright Joe Orton's darkly comic plays is that they don't lose their potency over time.")

Yet, I felt that the play did lose it's potency. Somehow the amoral behavior of the characters in the play doesn't seem so shocking today. Nor the disrespect for the church and the police force. Nor the veiled bisexuality of Hal and Dennis. Call me callous, but the whole notion of hiding stolen loot in the coffin of one's mother did not set me on edge. And I think that's where Orton's strength lies, turning morality upside down and putting the audience ill at ease. And while his earlier Entertaining Mr. Sloane can still put one on edge (I re-read both Loot and Sloane recently), I find that Loot comes across as more titillating than outrageous.

The cast and set were good, and I particularly liked Michael Hanrahan as Truscott (reminded me a bit of Stephen Fry's batty inspector in Gosford Park, but with a dark side).

Fun, but not as edgy/funny as it might have been. The audience got a fair number of laughs, although they didn't laugh much at one of my favorite lines in the play:

Truscott (to Hal, referring to Hal's mother's glass eye and false teeth): Most people would at least flinch upon seeing their mother's eyes and teeth handed round like nuts at Christmas.

Now, that's a killer!