Coffins and coffers

Staging a comedy 40 years after it won two awards for best play might seem daunting. What was in vogue then may appear ridiculously out of date now, social values have changed and what shocked audiences once can hardly raise an eyebrow.

"Loot" is described as a "tour de force of bad taste and high farce" and, by many, is considered irreverent, amoral and bizarre.

Not long after its playwright was murdered, this play’s irreverent style became fashionable. Joe Orton’s lethal sense of humor can still send some scurrying out the door, yet the play’s offensive edge has softened.

In an era when far more scandalous behavior can be viewed in the comfort of one’s own living room, Orton’s farce about a pair of bisexual bank robbers, a murderous nurse, a beleaguered old widower and a suspicious local water company official who turns out to be a corrupt cop seems pretty tame.

However, this madcap farce, with its cynical mockery of corrupt policemen, Catholicism and loveless family relations, still hits home with the sting of sharp comic wit. It puts bad taste to good use.

The action takes place on the day of the funeral of Mrs. McLeavy, who is survived by her husband (David Howey), a devoted Catholic and horticulturalist, and her son (Tobias Segal), a delinquent and philanderer who has robbed a bank with his buddy (Chancellor Dean). When the intrepid Inspector Truscott (Anthony Lawton) shows up, they need a place to stash the loot. Mrs. McLeavy’s coffin seems perfect, but what will they do with the body?

That question serves as the springboard for a farce that is as macabre as it is hilarious. In an epigrammatic style that at its best recalls Oscar Wilde, Orton skewers the middle class’s mindless obedience of civil and moral authority and celebrates "a Utopia of decadence."

Under the extraordinary direction of Douglas C. Wager, the Arden Theatre Company has found a magical manipulator. Suddenly a balanced perspective of the playwright as prankster and as a chronicler of panic takes shape. Plausibility and heightened theatricality are one. More astonishingly, the audience is confronted with the vastly entertaining wickedness within, the capacity to take pleasure in the unspeakable.

The openly gay Orton was a bit of a thug, a semi-anarchist who spent time in jail with collaborator and lover Kenneth Halliwell for pasting outrageous images into library books. At 34, while at the peak of his career, Halliwell murdered Orton. The playwright loved to shock: Among the work he left behind was a never-produced screenplay for the Beatles called "Prick Up Your Ears," a play on words on several levels as "ears" is an anagram.

"Loot" has the form of high comedy, but underneath the superficial absurdity there are telling observations of reality, an incoherency between word and deed that leaves characters forever at linguistic cross-purposes. Orton had a preposterous love for wild and complicated stories and delighted in sending up various genres, including detective stories in "Loot" and Feydeau farces in "What The Butler Saw."

The play is set in 1964’s London, specifically in the modest home of Mr. McLeavy, who is preparing to bury his wife after three days of mourning. In fact, the open casket has a prominent spot in the sitting room. Meanwhile, McLeavy’s snotty son, Hal, and his equally obnoxious buddy, Dennis, are planning to hide the cash from their recent bank robbery.

Now add Fay (Kate Hampton), the shapely private nurse who has seen Mrs. McLeavy through her last moments. She comes with plenty of practice, having lost seven husbands in 10 years, most to quick deaths. She also seems to be setting her eyes on Mr. McLeavy as a possible eighth. Last into the mix is Truscott clearly of Scotland Yard, but claiming to be a water department employee. He also has a strange tendency to apply unusual methods of deduction. The ingredients are in place for a quick spiral towards madness. Orton spices his plot twists with delicious turns of phrase.

Speaking of Mrs. McLeavy, Fay says: "The Ten Commandments — she was a great believer in some of them." Later, in referring to her late husbands, she muses: "Had euthanasia not been against my religion, I would have used it. Instead, I murdered them."

Every one of the characters is hilariously detached: Some are so beholden to authority they are detached from reason; others, such as Truscott, are so dizzy with power they become detached from social responsibility. The rest, like Hal, are so purposefully amoral they are detached from any semblance of conventional behavior.

Lawton is delightfully droll and foolishly endearing. Hampton manages to woo the widower with subtle acidity. Her sensual cunning is not as seductively funny as it could be, but her teasing manipulative action firmly takes hold of one’s attention. Howey acts the grieving widower and abused father with the right dash of befuddlement. Segal and Dean are merely adequate as homosexual buddies — who also end up seduced by the manipulative nurse.

What matters most is the tone and style of performance. You need cool actors using just a touch of camp — deadpan and deadly serious — who never emphasize their character’s extravagances and immoralities. With that achievement, The Arden’s "Loot" spirals into black comedy and into an anarchic world where wickedness and hypocrisy put all goodness to flight.

"Loot" remains a pointedly unique comic spree and, while not all will comfortably digest its nutty splendor, Orton’s clever, if unsavory humor, manages to survive with a certain distinction.

Loot
Through Oct. 30
The Arden Theater
40 N. Second St.
Tickets: $27 to $45
215-922-1122
www.ardentheatre.org