LOOT. To 7 February.
London.
LOOT
by Joe Orton.
Tricycle Theatre To 31 January.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat & 22, 23, 31 Dec, 2 Jan 4pm, 17 Dec, 21, 28 Jan 2.30pm.
no performance 24-26 Dec, 31 Dec eve, 1 Jan.
then Theatre Royal Newcastle-upon-Tyne
3-7 February 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu 2pm & Sat 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7328 1000.
www.tricycle,co.uk (Tricycle).
08448 112121
www.theatreroyal.co.uk (Newcastle-upon-Tyne).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 December.
Loot is a hoot.
Following Alan Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests at the Old Vic, revealed as funnier than ever when they’re taken seriously, here from the mid-sixties heyday of subversion Joe Orton’s farce of crime and injustice gains from treatment at the Tricycle which builds comic exaggeration around recognisably real motives.
Since Margaret Thatcher started re-imposing the 1950s on England, the beliefs Orton knocked have crept back, fortified by increasing fears of knife-crime, terrorism and the like.These affect almost all, while in 1966 the audience that might have found Loot disturbing was doubtless tucked-up with cosy repeats of Dixon of Dock Green, Ortonic iconoclasm being easily assimilated by those who saw it as holding a mirror to their advanced liberalism.
Police fit-ups and serial murderers in Florence Nightingale clothing might no longer surprise - though Doon Mackichan’s Fay spends the evening in a gorgeously mournful number rather than nursing uniform. But director Sean Holmes avoids glittering glibness by treating Orton’s well-shaped sentences with savage cool or passion on Anthony Lamble’s supremely dowdy mid-sixties set.
The older generation takes prominence. Holmes hardly emphasises the swappings of cash and corpse between coffin and furnishings, making the background bank robbery seem incidental. Even Fay’s manipulations ride on the whirligig of morality and corruption represented by James Hayes, his McCleavy a true believer in the law as pillar of a society that can properly call on him to curtail his liberty, and David Haig as Inspector Truscott, the sharp-eyed sleuth who doesn’t miss a trick.
Truscott’s eventual corruption is hardly a surprise in an age used to cash-stuffed envelopes circulating for services readily rendered. What fuels the evening, from the moment Haig commandingly takes the stage, is Truscott’s manic energy. Pouncing, pounding, crushing consonants and stretching unfortunate vowels like the necks of party balloons (he doesn’t have a ‘ruse’, but a ‘rooooooooozzze’), Haig takes Truscott through agonies of moral outrage, expounded through paroxysms of vocal and physical contortions.
Balanced by Hayes’ puzzled, suffering uprightness and Mackichan’s cool insistence, it makes for an hilarious revival in an age when Orton’s puncturing of old certainties again seems a necessary provocation.
McCleavy: James Hayes.
Fay: Doon Mackichan.
Hal: Matt Di Angelo.
Dennis: Javone Prince.
Truscott: David Haig.
Meadows: Jim Creighton.
Director: Sean Holmes.
Designer: Anthony Lamble.
Lighting: Charles Balfour.
Sound: Greg Clarke.
Movement/Stunt: Lucy Allen.
Dialect coach: Penny Dyer.
Fight co-ordinator: Terry King.
2008-12-17 01:30:18