after all, people might talk
by Douglas Messerli
Joe Orton Loot / Los Angeles, Odyssey
Theatre Ensemble / the performance I saw was with Howard Fox on June 16, 2019.
In playwright Joe Orton’s comedies things
usually begin bad and quickly get worse—or at least more frenetic. The
“villains” almost win out in the end, while the pious forces of society such as
the police and priests get punished, or more often, are simply exposed for
being the true scoundrels working against the social order. Wild
sexuality, homosexuality, incest, robbery, and even murder are treated by Orton
as far more fun than a life of order and religiosity.
It
is no wonder, accordingly, that his second play Loot, which first opened
in 1964, drew outrage from much of British society. That it has been so often
staged since (I’ve seen two productions just in Los Angeles) perhaps
demonstrates how morality has shifted or simply how much fun his dark comic
plays are. Certainly, Orton’s version of black comedy completely altered the
theater world—far, far more than the angry young men plays of John Osbourne and
others or kitchen sink dramas of Arnold Wesker or Shelagh Delaney.
The new production of the noted Los Angeles theater Odyssey Theatre
Ensemble, although a bit rough at moments in its directorial (by Bart
DeLorenzo) timing, did not disappoint, even if the often audience did.
Truscott, evidently based on a real thuggish and abusive policeman,
Harold Challenor, in Orton’s topsy-turvy world is the true force of evil in
this farce, while even the sexual high-jinx of Hal and Dennis (one must recall
that homosexuality was still banned in England and the Stonewall uprising in
the USA was about five years in the future), their seemingly successful
robbery, Dennis’ determination to marry Fay (he is clearly bi-sexual or
perhaps, given his good looks, even pan-sexual) and even Fay’s murder
(evidently not her first) can’t even begin to match the open brutality, lies,
and abusiveness of Truscott.
This is a play in which you truly hope the thieves and murderer get away
with their crimes. After all, the boys need the money to settle down together,
and Fay has once more run out of funds, while Mrs. McLeavy (Selina Woolery
Smith) was quite clearly a blind, old woman already on her deathbed, and her
cliché-spouting husband certainly might deserve a change of venue. Surely Mrs.
McLeavy’s black dress, trimmed with an emerald lining (costumes by Michael
Mullen), looks better on the young Fay than it might have ever on the old wife.
Despite Truscott’s endless attacks, they are mostly bluffs since he
seems to be the most stupid and blind chief of police in existence, a bit like
the one in Robert Altman’s film, years later, Gosford Park, a work
obviously influenced by the likes of Loot.
A
lot of humor of this work exists in its endless site-gags, some of which,
despite the generally excellent acting of the play’s characters, just didn’t
quite come off. Yet the wit of Orton’s dialogue is so infectious that even the
appearing and disappearing coffin and body, a bit clumsy at moments, doesn’t
truly slow down the play much.
When the country has selected a president that behaves somewhat
similarly to the policeman Truscott, making the rules up as he goes along, and
might be very willingly accept a bribe of 30% of the loot, or even vindictively
kill off the pious old coot who knows too much about the events, it has become
a bit more difficult to laugh out loud.
And
as in Harold Prince’s 1970 film Something for Everyone—another offspring
of Orton’s comic outlook—it is Fay who finally whisks away the handsome young
prince, Dennis, explaining that when she and he marry it wouldn’t look right
for him to remain with Hal: “after all, people might talk.”
Los Angeles, June 17, 2019
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and
Performance (June 2019).
No comments:
Post a Comment