Review: Loot (Queen's Theatre Hornchurch)

Review by Izzy Tierney

⭐️⭐️

Breaking, entering and seizing the stage of the lovely Queen's Theatre Hornchurch is Loot, an audacious dark farce promising to be a “wickedly funny night”. My hopes were high for this classic play, but would it be able to successfully steal my heart?

Written by Joe Orton, Loot follows two thieves, Hal and Dennis, who, after robbing the bank next to the funeral parlour where Dennis works, stash the money at Hal's house with the intention of fleeing abroad before they can be caught. Helped by Hal's reluctant father, McCleavy, and his late mother's nurse, chaos ensues when they must hide the money from an unexpected police inspector, whilst simultaneously proceeding with Mrs McCleavy's funeral.

First shown in 1965, Loot is rather dated in front of a modern audience, though it is easy to see how it would have felt scandalous at the time of its premiere. This production has not attempted to rework Orton's script into the 21st century, a decision which mostly works, except for a few “jokes” that are harmful and unnecessary. For example, the casual mentions of sexual violence towards women as if it is no big deal, and the men discussing a brothel run by three children aged ten to fifteen, who take sweets as payment, before laughing that they must remember to buy plenty of Mars bars before they visit. A few misogynistic remarks, such as the intelligence (or lack thereof) of women, are to be expected from a play written in the 1960s and makes sense as it accurately reflects the social attitudes of the time being portrayed on stage, but not removing those offhand pieces of dialogue about sexual violence against women and children is in incredibly poor taste, especially as they are not at all relevant to the plot.

Despite this, there are plenty of clever jokes and witty comebacks throughout the dialogue that showcase Orton's talent as a playwright. The majority of the script is sharply satirical, with many of the themes still being relevant today (police brutality and corruption being a prime example) even if they don't have the same shock value they would have had sixty years ago. All of the action takes place in one room, a simple but efficient design by Zoë Hurwitz that allows plenty of space for props to be suitably mishandled (aka a coffin and a corpse) and Ruth Cooper-Brown to choreograph successful fight sequences.

Being a lover of a good farce, I know it's a tricky style of comedy to get right - the line between being comically over the top and annoyingly over the top is a thin one. Unfortunately, this production falls into the latter category. The absurd and ludicrous situations the characters find themselves in could definitely be funny, but with the cast overacting too much, the comedy gets lost as there's no real chemistry between them or energy to bounce off of. Movements should, of course, be exaggerated in true farce style, but in this case are over-exaggerated and repetitive, so by the time the second act is being performed, the physical element feels tired rather than surprising and therefore fails to deliver the intended comedic impact.

There were multiple times during the show where I felt as though I should be laughing; I could recognise when a funny scene was taking place and acknowledge when a line perfectly matched my sense of humour, but other than making me smile a few times, it didn't really do much else. I didn't care about any of the characters, not because they were awful people (I love a villain!) but because there was no depth to any of them. Shows like The Play That Goes Wrong and Accidental Death of an Anarchist are great examples of farces where the characters are hilariously ridiculous yet still feel like real, fleshed-out human beings, whereas in this performance of Loot, they feel more like apathetic caricatures than humans.

I want to make it clear that I take no pleasure in writing a negative review. I know there will have been a great amount of time and effort put into this production by both the cast and creative team, and I'm sure many people will wholeheartedly enjoy it. Unfortunately for me, it just didn't hit the mark.

Loot plays at Queens Theatre Hornchurch until 7th March. Tickets from https://queens-theatre.co.uk/whatson/loot/

Photos by Manuel Harlan