Loot: Methuen Student Edition (Student Editions) - Softcover

Orton, Joe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0413567605 ISBN 13: 9780413567604

Publisher: Methuen Drama, 2006

Synopsis

A black farce masterpiece, Loot follows the fortunes of two
young thieves, Hal and Dennis. Dennis is a hearse driver for an
undertaker. They have robbed the bank next door to the funeral parlour
and have returned to Hal's home to hide-out with the loot. Hal's mother
has just died and the pair put the money in her coffin, hiding the body
elsewhere in the house. With the arrival of Inspector Truscott, the
thickened plot turns topsy-turvy. Playing with all the conventions of
popular farce, Orton creates a world gone mad and examines in detail
English attitudes at mid-century. The play has been called a Freudian
nightmare, which sports with superstitions about death - and life. It
is regularly produced in professional and amateur productions. First produced in London in 1966, Loot was hailed as "the
most genuinely quick-witted, pungent and sprightly entertainment by a
new, young British playwright for a decade" (Sunday Telegraph).

The Student Edition offers a plot summary, full commentary, character
notes and questions for study, besides a chronology and bibliography.

About this title

About the Author:

Joe Orton (1933-1967) was an English playwright noted for his black comedies, which combine genteel dialogue with violent and shocking action. Orton left home at 16 to train as an actor. His subversive style of humour first revealed itself in a bizarre incident in 1962, when he and his lover, Kenneth Halliwell were jailed for defacing library books. The two had carefully removed jacket blurbs from middle-brow novels and substituted their own, mostly scatological, counterfeits. Orton delighted in shocking audiences by breaking taboos surrounding sexuality and death in conventionally structured 'black' farces involving epigrammatic dialogue and frenetic, convoluted plots. Thus, in Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964), a young lodger attempts to lure a woman and her brother into providing him with all he needs, only to find he has become each one's sexual plaything; Loot (1965) is a parody of a detective story involving much comic business with a coffin and a corpse; and What the Butler Saw (1969) stylishly turns farce on its head. Orton was a homosexual in a period before the liberalization of British law, and this side of his life is described in detail in his posthumously published diaries. He was battered to death by Halliwell (who subsequently committed suicide) during a domestic argument at their home in Islington, North London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0413567605
• ISBN 13: 9780413567604
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144