"Loot" (at the Lucille Lortel Theatre)

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Rocco Sisto, Nick Westrate, Ryan Garbayo (photo: Rahav Segev)

A revival of Joe Orton’s “Loot” almost always stirs up our expectations for a rollicking good time. The resurrection of that infamous dead body that is known to maintain a steady and laugh-inducing presence in this now classic farce is being commendably attended to by the talented folk from the Red Bull Theater. Their production is currently on view at the Lucille Lortel Theatre where the corpus delicti has been delectably given due respect. “Loot” may appear a farce, but it is in dead earnest about uncovering the corruptness, the callousness, and the capriciousness of people who often claim to be in the good graces of society.

Perhaps director Jesse Berger doesn’t trust the dead earnestness of the play and felt he needed to treat like a burlesque spoof or old English music hall skit. But this is not a distraction that harms one of the funniest and most sardonic satires in 20^th century play literature. If some of the shock and surprise of the text is lost by actors encouraged to bits of audience pandering, the plot, nevertheless, meanders unimpeded in its own brilliantly skewed maze.

There is also enough of what remains innately and hilarious sinister in the play to make you laugh even when you realize what could have been. There is this tantalizing nurse who, though she may not believe in euthanasia, does believe in murder. Her ninth victim, a Mrs. McLeary, has recently succumbed. The burial of the recently deceased is, however, hampered by the fact that Mrs. McLeary’s wayward son and his pal, an undertaker with a flair for the macabre, have temporarily taken possession of the coffin.

Where else could they stash the “loot” from their recent robbery? A bereaved, unsuspecting husband stands by as a police inspector pretending to be a fact finder from the Metropolitan water board bursts onto the scene to rearrange the facts in a manner that would be rivaled only by Inspector Clousot.

The author, himself, murdered at the age of 34 in 1967, had only moderate success with his plays. Although his first play “Entertaining Mr. Sloan,” was a commercial failure on Broadway, it has been periodically revived. Orton’s last play “What The Butler Saw,” was posthumously produced Off-Broadway and won the Obie Award for Best Off-Broadway Foreign Play of the year.  

Formidably wallowing in enough diabolical thoughts and deeds to make your nerves tingle, Orton’s matter-of-factly perverse characters are also lamentably persuasive. The cast is well chosen, but at the performance that I attended were just settling into the perversity of their characters’ personalities.

Deliberately telegraphing the jokes behind her lines, the blonde and shapely Rebecca Brooksher is certainly amusing as Fay, the mercenary serial murderess nurse. As Truscott the inept yet vicious police inspector, Rocco Sisto deploys comical ingenuity glaring, squinting, and rotating his eyes as he twists every one of his inquiries into a circle of incomprehensible deductions. As the widower who becomes increasingly submerged in a convoluted predicament, Jarlath Conroy has a respectable go at his task of turning from forlorn dumbfoundedness into a state of unhinged stupefaction. Hardly subtle is the spirited bi-sexual interplay that propels the action and the relationship of the undertaker Dennis (Ryan Garbayo) and Hal (Nick Westrate) the amoral loose-tongued son who always feels compelled to tell the truth.

Set designer Narell Sissons created a proper interior of a British middle class home, its hideous, flowered wallpaper making a notable nod to British interior design taste in its time. If there are a few lapses that keep the performances and the staging from extracting all the hyper reality-rooted lunacy embedded within “Loot,” the play continues to be a fantastically deranged and topsy-turvy marauding of our senses, a dazzlingly written black comedy that brings to the surface more than it buries.

“Loot” (through February 9, 2014) Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 7:30pm, Thursday and Friday evenings at 8pm, Saturdays at 2pm & 8pm, and Sunday matinees at 3pm at the Lucille Lortel Theater (121 Christopher Street, between Bleecker & Hudson Streets).  Single tickets are on sale now (from only $25). Matador Club members have access to half-price tickets along with other perks. Memberships and single tickets may be purchased online at www.redbulltheater.com or by phone at (212) 352-3101.