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Theatre Review: Loot
“Loot rich in laughs”
DAVID CUSWORTH, The West Australian June 7, 2010, 10:00 am
Loot by Joe Orton
Class Act Theatre
Subiaco Arts Centre
When the English establishment jailed actor Joe Orton in the 1960s, it set him free.
Free to scarify authority with a withering yet witty vision of human failing which loses none of its vitality in Class Act's rendition of Loot, a dark comedy about corruption and complicity.
Written 45 years ago, the script is as old as the post-war utility furniture which director Stephen Lee uses to set the scene in Subiaco Arts Centre's studio theatre. It's a nice touch from a confessed child of those times who balances the idiom of both eras in a fresh and entertaining reading of a modern classic.
Loot originally starred Carry On film star Kenneth Williams, which alone suggests the text should not be taken too seriously, and Class Act achieves an entertaining balance of slapstick and irony which makes a very enjoyable evening.
English comedy of the time often revolves around a trapped relationship, such as that between the widower McLeavy (Kym Bidstrup) and nurse Fay (Angelique Malcolm). "You've been a widower for three days, now have you thought about a second marriage?" Fay asks.
The pair navigate a channel between "stage Irish" and melodrama, keeping a keen sense of timing throughout.
Nick Candy and Stacy Gougoulis complement them as a next generation odd couple, the bereaved son Hal and his undertaker-partner in crime Dennis. Candy ably straddles the time warp between 1965 and now as a sweetly disingenuous petty crook in whose mouth butter would not melt, while Gougoulis deftly plays an almost timeless spiv who would make himself at home with anyone's good fortune.
They are pursued by Truscott of the Yard, a tour de force by Ian Toyne who pitches his arch delivery somewhere between Hercule Poirot and Monty Python, to excellent effect.
Even Shirley Van Sanden's limited cameo roles as the corpse and WPC Meadows add a touch of whimsy to the mix. In fact Loot was surrounded by many influences. The Sixties were Swinging, but so was theatre, film and "light entertainment", a curious amalgam of music hall, radio and burgeoning TV comedy.
On Saturday the players showed some early season nerves, but kept up the pace and timing of delivery in a sustained performance which nicely preserved the suspension of disbelief.
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Theatre students in English and Cultural Studies at UWA present contemporary English playwright Howard Barker’s rewriting of Thomas Middleton’s early-1620s Jacobean revenge tragedy Women Beware Women. Middleton’s play was last performed at UWA in the Octagon Theatre in 1982, directed by the then director-in-residence Timothy West with a cast comprising English Department staff and members of the UWA Grads and student theatre communities. This radical reworking utilises most of the first four acts and language of Middleton’s play in its first half, with a second half comprised of Barker’s mixture of vividly poetic and robust vernacular language that takes the trajectories of the protagonists towards a denouement which leaves most of the characters surviving, but which shatters the ducal state of greed, misogyny, and moral corruption – a denouement which Middleton saw fit to end with a conventional revenge tragedy massacre of his troublesome protagonists. Suitable for audiences 15+.
Tickets at Dolphin door.