Sadly, I came to the same conclusion with Loot. It is hard to imagine now how dazzlingly brilliant Orton's macabre comedies seemed in the late '60s. Loot, which I saw in an early production, was to me almost amazingly knowing, daring, subversive, clever and above all funny. Homosexuality was still, just, illegal when Orton wrote it and plays were still subject to the will of the Lord Chamberlain: he declared in 1967 that Loot could only be put on if certain phrases not wholly respectful to the Royal Family, Sacred Heart and the religion of Pakistani kids were cut and if the word buggery were replaced with beggary. So it was easier for a writer to be transgressive in those prim times, much easier to shock and delight an audience and to be funny in the process. For all its wit, Loot hasn't really survived the explosion of social, sexual and religious freedom which was ignited around the time of Orton's early death. Comedy depends on a sense of transgression, which is probably why contemporary comedy is so often not very funny. Far from being transgressive, it is usually trying to toe the conventional liberal line.
All the same, Sean Holmes's capable production at the Tricycle did as much for Loot as can be done, I think. David Haig as the sinister policeman Truscott carries the show, and the rest of the cast are confident and convincing. There is a contemporary feel in the way the police behave. They are unashamedly indifferent to everyone's civil liberties and feelings, and Truscott jubilantly ignores Mr McCleavy's protests at being bullied by a man apparently from the water board. Whether today's police (and water board men) are better or worse than those of Orton's worldview, the abuse of state power in an anarchic, rather Kafka-esque world is something of Orton that has survived. Loot is certainly worth seeing for a first time, partly because the Tricycle in Kilburn is a great theatre to go to. The same applies to Orton's much better play, Entertaining Mr Sloane, which is playing at the Trafalgar Studios until 11 April. The Tricycle tries in the best sense to be innovative and experimental, although in aspiring to "inclusion" and "community work" it runs the risk of being conventional.
My conclusion was that both plays are very well worth seeing, for a first time, and Twelfth Night for Jacobi alone, but that neither play was quite good enough to survive either the 40- or the 400-year test. Few plays are. Even fewer still are really worth seeing repeatedly. Perhaps as with novels, a play has something to do with novelty, with psychological and emotional discovery. Perhaps - differently from music - one can have an excess of it, which does sicken the appetite. For a while, at least.
