50th anniversary production of Joe Orton’s Loot comes to Park Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
From the producers of the recent sell-out hit, The Boys in the Band, comes another darkly comic masterpiece: Joe Orton’s classic farce Loot.
Voted Best Play of the Year in the Evening Standard Awards, it runs at London’s Park Theatre from August 23 (previews from August 17) to September 24, 2017.
The production marks the 50th anniversary of Joe Orton’s death on August 9, 1967, and just months after Loot’s award-winning West End season at the Criterion Theatre.
Uproarious slapstick meets dubious morals as two young friends, Hal and Dennis, stash the proceeds of a bank robbery in an occupied coffin, attempting to hide their spoils from the attentions of a psychopathic policeman, a gold-digging nurse and a grieving widower.
The ensuing black comedy – named one of the National Theatre’s “100 Plays of the Century” – shocked and delighted West End audiences in equal measure when the play premiered five decades ago. Sixties style icon Michael Caine loved it so much he saw it six times. Another big fan was Beatle Paul McCartney.
Between 1963 when his first play was accepted and 1967 when he died, aged just 34, in a frenzied hammer attack in a murder-suicide at the hands of his jealous partner, Kenneth Halliwell, Joe Orton became a playwright of international reputation.
Fascinated with the macabre, he wrote only a handful of plays including Entertaining Mr Sloane and What The Butler Saw, but his impact on the arts was huge. His reviews ranged from praise to outrage, and the term “Ortonesque”, describing work characterised by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism, was in common usage.
Like Oscar Wilde before him, Orton’s plays scandalised audiences, but his wit made the outrage scintillating. He was the toast of London, had an award-winning West End play, two other plays broadcast on TV, appeared on chat shows and had been commissioned to write a movie script for The Beatles. In the end, his death was more lurid than anything he put on stage and made front page news.
Loot will be directed by Michael Fentiman, whose credits include two acclaimed shows for the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as the critically-acclaimed hit, Raising Martha.
Produced by Tom O’Connell, James Seabright and The Watermill Theatre in association with King’s Head Theatre and Park Theatre, Loot will be designed by Gabriella Slade, with lighting design by Elliot Griggs and sound design by Max Pappenheim. Casting will be announced in due course.
For more information or to book tickets, visit www.parktheatre.co.uk/whats-on/loot.
Following the London dates, Loot will transfer to the Watermill Theatre from September 28 to October 21, 2017.
View teaser trailer at www.youtube.com/.
Also at Park Theatre: the world premiere of brand new comedy Twitstorm (May 31 to July 1) and Shakespeare, Tolkien, Others & You with Sir Ian McKellen (July 3 to July 9, 2017).