Loot at Gunston Arts Center

Edge of the Universe Theater is thrilled to announce the upcoming production of Joe Orton’s highly acclaimed Loot. The play, which has been hailed as “a theatrical Molotov cocktail hurled at middle-class sensibility” by The Village Voice, will run from June 6 through June 28 at the Gunston Arts Center, Theatre Two (2700 S. Lang St., Arlington, VA). The play will be directed by Stephen Jarrett, Edge of the Universe board member and longtime collaborator.

Loot represents one of the most audacious achievements in twentieth-century British theatre — a dark farce that both embodies and satirizes social mores and probes the nature of authority, religion, and morality through razor-sharp dialogue and uproarious physical comedy. First staged in 1965, the play follows two young men who rob a bank and, desperate to conceal the money, stash it in a coffin. This incident triggers a hilarious, anarchic chain of events involving a spectacularly crooked police inspector, a predatory nurse, and a grieving, oblivious widower. Loot is much more than a bank-heist comedy; it’s a master class in controlled chaos, provocative, subversive, and wickedly funny.

“I have always seen Loot as Oscar Wilde meets Monty Python,” says Jarrett. “It marries the exquisite, poetic language, subtlety, and wit of the former with the deadpan, satirical humor of the latter. Additionally, Orton’s characters, and especially Fay in Loot, are some of the most interesting in all of modern English productions.”

Orton’s career was short and chaotic, stretching from 1964 until his murder in 1967 by his partner. Extraordinary for the time, Orton was openly gay, and his work often shocked and outraged mainstream audiences while becoming profoundly influential on future generations of playwrights.

Loot features a veritable Who’s Who of local actors, including John Stange (Meadows), Max Johnson (Dennis), Sabrina Lynne Sawyer* (Fay), David Bryan Jackson* (Truscott), Max Jackson* (Hal), and Jesse Terrill (McLeavy).

Tickets are $25 and are on sale at https://www.edgeuniversetheater.org

Loot is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. www.concordtheatricals.com