Take an embalmed corpse, a glass eye, a coffin stuffed with bank-notes, a police inspector as crazy as he is corrupt and a nurse addicted to killing her husbands. As an antidote to our annual dose of Christmas goodwill and spiritual smugness the Tricycle offers Joe Orton’s ingenious blast of bad-taste satire, a mocking Wildean piece from the 1960s whose extravagantly farcical plot is too absurd to accept with a straight face. But Loot does take serious aim at an England eager to wear the trappings of respectability while succumbing to immorality.
Sean Holmes’s production of this famous piece of Ortonian provocation offers no fresh insight into the author’s mind-set. Nor does it dissuade me from my conviction that Loot is the least of Orton’s three major plays. If Orton wanted to make fun of our taboos about death and corpses, if he intended to level charges against the infinite corruptibility of the Metropolitan Police and make fun of obscure Catholic sects, he would have launched a sharper attack by keeping in pointed touch with reality.
Never mind. The aphoristic Loot spirals inventively into the higher reaches of preposterousness, false reasoning and sheer lunacy. Inspector Truscott of the Yard, disguised as a man from the Water Board, probes the McCleavy household. Mrs McCleavy’s corpse lies in an open coffin while her husband mourns and Doon Mackichan’s nurse brazenly attempts to coax him to the altar, far too soon after the funeral. The fact that an undertaker (Javone Prince) and McCleavy’s son Hal (Matt Di Angelo) wish to use the coffin as hiding place for the proceeds of a bank robbery sets the plot whirring. This family seems remarkable for its lack of family feeling.
David Haig, who makes Holmes’s Loot a delectable amusement, proves the definitive Truscott. Head poking forward and gesturing like an inquisitive tortoise, nasal voice throbbing with the passion of a fanatic, Haig relishes the contrary wiliness of a man intent upon nabbing wrong-doers only to profit from their wrong-doing.
Until 31 January (020 7328 1000)
Loot
Tricycle Theatre
Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR
