Uneven ‘Loot’ Has an Evergreen Theme: Greed

Joe Orton’s “Loot” fits comfortably into a summer of “Survivor” and “Big Brother,” if not quite so comfortably into the Center Theater of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center.

In Orton’s farce from mid-’60s England, a group of people desperately scheme to win a grand prize. Sometimes they work in teams; at other times individuals don’t hesitate to sever previous ties. A shadowy authority figure tells them what they can and cannot do.

Of course, today’s televised scheming is legal and open, broadcast to millions. In Orton’s play the prize--the loot--is stolen, and everyone has to keep up proper appearances; the hypocrisy is more blatant.

Also, Orton’s authority figure is more sinister, because he operates away from the light of publicity, with no one--not even TV ratings--keeping him in check. Not that his kind of character--a cop who runs roughshod over the law and is open to bribery--has totally vanished. The themes and passions in “Loot” are alarmingly evergreen.

Jessica Kubzansky’s staging for International City Theatre did not look particularly evergreen on Saturday. The ingredients appear to be of high quality, so the blend may yet come together. On Saturday, though, actors were still fumbling a few of the lines, laughter was surprisingly sparse, and a big piece of furniture inadvertently fell near the end of the first act.

Newcomers to “Loot” might want to brace themselves. The corpse of the late Mrs. McLeavy and several of its more detachable parts are among the objects of the farcical shenanigans, along with the stash from a bank job.

The original looters are a pair of young “mates”: Hal (Matt Gourley), the son of the deceased, and undertaker’s assistant Dennis (Matt Walker). Their goal is to get the hot cash out of the house before the police come snooping. Hal offers the smuggling services of his just-deceased mother’s coffin, which is awaiting the funeral. But what to do with the body?

Also surviving Mrs. McLeavy is her grieving widower (Edmund L. Shaff). He’s the target of a marital campaign by the seemingly sanctimonious nurse Fay (Molly Schaffer), who tended his sick wife. Fay has plenty of experience in marital campaigns, if not in caring for the sick; she marries and becomes a widow just about once a year.

Dennis has a yen for Fay, and she turns her attentions toward him after she begins comparing his recently acquired riches with McLeavy’s. Soon she has joined the two young men in their plotting. But looming over the plots is the police detective Truscott (Tom Shelton), who poses as an inspector for the water board. Truscott masks his incompetence with arbitrary cruelty and absurd displays of detective derring-do.

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Kubzansky’s staging features a little dance--or at least a burst of rhythmic movement--for the two young men when they unveil the loot in the first act. The fuzzy-haired Walker, a creator and performer of Troubadour Theater Company’s manic takes on Shakespeare, and the green-haired Gourley pull off this moment with aplomb. We briefly share in the seductive exhilaration of greed.

But the rest of the production offers nothing this special. On Saturday, the actors appeared to need another week of rehearsals before everything would snap into place. Shelton is a crafty Truscott but not an especially sinister one. Shaff is amusingly weepy as McLeavy. Schaffer’s line readings at first sounded slightly forced, but she grew quite assured as the evening went on.

The sharply thrust stage configuration, with its open sides and the empty seats in the back, discourages the impression of farcical tension building up inside a pressure cooker. The skewed angles of Don Llewellyn’s set try to overcome the sense of extra space, but what’s the explanation for the dried leaves, prominently displayed at the front of the stage? The program sets the play in June, not October.

Max Kinberg’s incidental music has a hurdy-gurdy sound that suggests two appropriate cultural reference points: soap opera and circus.

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* “Loot,” International City Theatre at Center Theater, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 24. $25 to $35. (562) 436-4610. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

Matt Gourley: Hal

Matt Walker: Dennis

Molly Schaffer: Fay

Edmund L. Shaff: McLeavy

Tom Shelton: Truscott

John Jabaley: Meadows

Written by Joe Orton. Directed by Jessica Kubzansky. Set by Don Llewellyn. Lighting by Donna Ruzika. Costumes by Sherry Linnell. Composer-sound designer Max Kinberg. Stage manager Michael Alan Ankney.