When Joe Orton wrote Loot, he was out to shock his audiences. One of his greatest black farces, the play centers around two amateur thieves (and suggested lovers), Dennis and Hal. Dennis works as a hearse driver for an undertaker and the pair have robbed the bank next door to the funeral parlor. They decide to hide their ‘loot’ in the coffin of Hal’s recently deceased mother, stashing her body in a wardrobe in the meantime. However, before they can remove the coffin, the dead body is discovered by Fay McMahon , a predatory nurse who makes a habit out of marrying men who subsequently die in strange circumstances. She has now quickly engaged herself to marry Hal’s father but when she discovers the Hal and Dennis’ stash of cash, she demands a third of the spoils. Dennis and Hal’s tricky situation is worsened further by the arrival of Inspector Truscott, who strangely disguises himself as a man from the local Water Board. Using the conventions of standard farce, the trio attempt to keep the body and the money away from the Inspector in an increasingly tangled web of deceit and corruption.
Loot guide sections
