Review: Loot at Herald Theatre

By Jodi Yeats

A set with two doors and a coffin immediately tells an audience they are in for an evening of farce. But, Joe Orton’s 1960s comedy Loot is far more than a slapstick comedy.

For a start, the script simmers with witty one-liners, often betraying the author’s campy sense of humour. For instance, when the son, Hal (David Van Horn), hits on the genius idea of hiding the loot from a bank heist in his dead mother’s coffin, he asks the buxom nurse, Fay McMahon, to remove his mother and undress her, protesting he couldn’t because it would be “a Freudian nightmare”.

The play offers an evening of non-stop laughs, many of the jokes reminding me of the absurd humour of the Goons Show. The jokes rely, largely, on an impeccable sense of timing and that’s where director Michael Hurst is in his forte. Hurst certainly does humour well and there are lots of details in the acting, use of props and physical humour that lift the script off the page.

The set and costumes are entirely in a funereal palette of black, white and grey, with only Fay McMahon’s bright red lips offering contrast. It is surreal and that works in a play where the events are also completely improbable.

Mia Blake does an impressive job of the curvy nurse who was tending to the dying Mrs McLeavy and seems unhealthily keen to marry her elderly husband, played by David McPhail. He is the only really empathetic character in the play and acts really well, never over-doing it, not an easy feat in such an over-the-top play.

Whenever, Mia Blake’s character isn’t actually involved in the action, she still inhabits her character and makes her actions humourous and saucy.

Only Charlie McDermott as Hal’s bank-robbing partner, Dennis, lets the side down by slightly over-acting, but he is very good-looking so gets away with it in the way Keanu Reeves does.

Hal is besotted with his friend, Dennis, and Dennis, in turn is in love with the buxom nurse. There is a lot of sexual ambiguity and innuendo, which certainly adds an edginess to an already dark comedy.

Loot was packed on opening night and I wouldn’t be surprised if it continued to draw the crowds.