When that style is achieved Loot spirals into black comedy, to an anarchic world where wickedness and hypocrisy put all goodness to flight. Last night, particularly thanks to a dazzling performance of comic star potential by Fred Ridgeway as Detective Inspector Truscott, Orton casts his old black magic spell again. Ridgeway's Detective, in a spooky grey hat which he refuses to move, has the look of a man up to no bad. He reeks of non-descript ordinariness in his pose as a water board man who wanders into a house of grief where Mrs McLeavy's remains are poised for immortality. Hardly has he set a probing foot inside than Truscott is caught in a conspiracy involving that coffin, the corpse and thousands of bank notes.
Bad taste takes a first bow and never really leaves the stage.
Orton's comedy springs from the way in which his immoral characters put on shows of virtue, conformity and pomposity or are shamelessly wicked. Never before has the play seemed so close to the theatre of the absurd or soared to such Lewis Carroll-like heights of nonsense. As the flagrant Truscott threatens and hectors, Ridgeway's speech begins to speed and hurtle. A gleeful fanaticism possesses him. You realise with delight that the Detective is not just a wily crook, putting logic to shame, but a seriously mad one as well.