Loot, theatre review: Greying comedy shows times and tastes have changed

Time hasn’t been kind to the plays of Joe Orton, the 50^th anniversary of whose death fell recently. His stock-in-trade of cocking a snook at established authorities and norms – here religion, the police, sexual mores and accepted morality - caused scandal and outrage in the 60s, but now just seems rather sad and unsavoury.

Loot, a pitch-black comedy that teeters permanently on the edge of farce, is finally being presented in its uncensored form, having previously fallen foul of the strictures of the ever-officious Lord Chamberlain. It may have won the Best Play prize at the 1967 Standard awards, but times, as well as tastes in theatre, have changed.

It doesn’t help that Michael Fentiman’s tonally uncertain production cannot sustain the giddy, spinning heights of absurdity and incredulity that this piece will always require in order to survive and thrive.

It’s intermittently amusing but predominantly laboured, as the loot from a bank robbery ends up in the coffin of a recently deceased woman (all credit to Anah Ruddin for gamely playing the corpse, which is lugged about mercilessly).

Former Evening Standard Emerging Talent nominee Calvin Demba plays one of the bungling no-goods who carried out the robbery; his partner in crime, and maybe more, is Hal (Sam Frenchum), son of the deceased.

Christopher Fulford has some fun as Truscott, the manic police inspector who insists that he’s from the water board, but the brightest spark is undoubtedly Sinéad Matthews as Fay, the nurse who tended to the late Mrs McLeavy. A mischievous smile and lilting voice hides deadly intent; it’s revealed that Fay has buried seven husbands in a decade. Even so, it’s exceedingly hard to care who, if anyone, walks off with the spoils.

Until Sept 24, Park Theatre; parktheatre.co.uk