LOOT Education Pack 1 Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 3 Joe Orton ................................................................................................................................... 4 My brother, Joe ......................................................................................................................... 6 Synopsis of Loot ......................................................................................................................... 7 Censorship ............................................................................................................................... 10 Loot Coverage .......................................................................................................................... 11 Notes from the Director .......................................................................................................... 12 Meet Dennis and Hal ............................................................................................................... 14 Funny Money: Loot then and now .......................................................................................... 15 Glossary of Terms .................................................................................................................... 17 Credits ...................................................................................................................................... 18 This education pack was written by Lixi Chivas with contributions from Tom O'Connell Productions Ltd, Megan Kerrigan and Michael Fentiman Production Photographs by Darren Bell. 2 Introduction This education pack has been designed to support your experience of seeing Loot at The Watermill. The pack is aimed primarily at teachers or students of Drama or English at Secondary School. This is a digital pack; where you see this arrow there is a link that you can click on to view other material online. Your feedback is most welcome, please email ([email protected]) or call us on 01635 570927. Don’t forget that we offer workshops on most aspects of drama, and visit many schools in the surrounding area to work with students and teachers. For a workshop menu, please visit the Outreach pages on our website, or get in touch. I hope you find the pack useful. Heidi Bird Outreach Director The Watermill Theatre Bagnor, Newbury, Berks RG20 8AE www.watermill.org.uk www.watermill.org.uk/education_packs The Watermill’s core Education and Outreach programme is generously supported by The Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation. 3 Joe Orton This production of Loot marks the 50th anniversary of Joe Orton’s murder at the hands of his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. His brief life may have started rather inconspicuously growing up on an estate in Leicester but Orton’s nonconformist lifestyle soon began to define his career and personal life. Born as John in 1933, Joe Orton lived with his three siblings in Leicester until he moved to London in 1951 having gained a scholarship to study at RADA. He differed from many of the classically educated students there but found a friend in Kenneth Halliwell who is often credited with nurturing Orton’s unruly talent. Though Halliwell and Orton often wrote together it was not until1964 that Orton’s work found any success with the production of his radio play The Ruffian on the Stair. This came after several years of financial hardship working first as a stage manager in Ipswich before moving to Cadbury’s chocolate factory amongst other things. Above: Hal (Sam Frenchum) and Truscott (Christopher Fulford). Below: Fay (Sinéad Matthews), Hal (Sam Frenchum) and McLeavy (Ian Redford). Before Orton’s writing career took off in 1964 the only particularly eventful episode in his life was not made legal until two weeks before Orton’s his and Halliwell’s arrest and six-month death. imprisonment for the defiling of library books. The pair offered a satirical social commentary on 1964 was a key year for Orton with plays the perceived baseness of various works by produced in radio (The Ruffian on the Stair), lewdly annotating and adding inappropriate television (The Good and Faithful Servant) and images to the covers. This was to be just the theatre (Entertaining Mr Sloane). Terrence beginning of Orton’s famed and radical approach Rattigan, one of the most established theatrical to commenting on the attitudes of the time; his writers of the time who shared Orton’s interest in plays were to shock many audiences with their criticising views towards homosexuality, put up allusion to homosexuality, the church and death £3,000 to transfer Entertaining Mr Sloane to the among other themes. It has been suggested that West End from the New Arts Theatre where it the harsh sentencing of the pair was due to the was originally staged. This financial and artistic homophobia of the time as homosexuality was support helped to establish Orton as an accepted 4 Standard award for Loot in 1966. However, his personal life was a troubled one with his partner Kenneth Halliwell becoming increasingly paranoid and dependant on prescription drugs. As the couple’s careers became more disparate, Halliwell was increasingly excluded from the theatrical circles of Orton’s friends and his mental health suffered. The last call made to the couple’s Islington flat on the night of August 8 was to arrange for Halliwell to start a course of psychiatry but unfortunately this intervention was too late. Kenneth Halliwell murdered Joe Orton as he slept on the morning of August 9 1967 before overdosing on prescription pills, killing himself. This morbid and controversial writer met a fate reminiscent of the harshness in his plays, though lacking the dark humour he had made his own. Hal (Sam Frenchum) and Fay (Sinéad Matthews). Several of his plays were produced posthumously including What the Butler Saw which satirised theatrical great whilst his partner Halliwell homophobia and the view of homosexuality as a remained completely obscure and un-produced. mental illness. Due to the content of his plays and the direct way in which Orton discussed Loot’s run began in 1965 and though its first homosexuality many see him as a pioneer for production starring the Carry On star Kenneth normalising homosexuality, especially in popular Williams was unsuccessful, the second re-cast culture. Though we will never know how his production achieved more success. Some writing would have changed in our more audience members struggled with Orton’s accepting society it is a certainty that Joe Orton’s macabre sense of humour. The cast was not life and works contributed to the sexual awakening of the 60s that has shaped our exempt from this: Orton reportedly suggested modern culture ever since. using his recently deceased mother’s false teeth as a prop in the production. MEGAN KERRIGAN Orton’s star continued to rise and he was soon invited to write a script for a film about the Beatles, though this was never to be written. Orton even beat Harold Pinter to win an Evening 5 My brother, Joe. By Leonie Orton-Barnett I’d spoken to Joe about me coming down to London to see his new play Loot. I wanted to see the play but I wanted to see him even more. I loved just being near him. He seemed, to me, to possess a self- confidence that I yearned for. He met me off the train at St Pancras. He was on his own. ‘No Kenneth?’ I asked. ‘No’ came the reply. He didn’t offer any explanation and I didn’t inquire further. I had him all to myself which I was pleased about. I sat next to him. I watched as the actors on stage manhandled a dummy, supposedly a corpse. I thought the dialogue was odd and seemed obscure to me. ‘Bury her naked? My own mum?’. Was he referring to our mam, I wondered. After the play had finished he took me backstage and I was introduced to the cast. Kenneth Cranham is very dishy, I thought. I wished I could be an actress. Later, with Sheila Ballantine he walked me back to St Pancras to catch my train back to Leicester. The play was still running at the Criterion Theatre when our mother died. Joe attended her funeral on 30th December 1966. He slipped our mother’s false teeth into his pocket. Later he took these false teeth with him to the theatre. Wednesday 4th January 1967. I’d taken my mother’s false teeth down to the theatre. I said to Kenneth Cranham, “Here, I thought you’d like the originals.” He said “What?”. “Teeth” I said. “Whose?” He said. “My mum’s” I said. He looked very sick. “You see” I said, “it’s obvious that you’re not thinking of the events of the play in terms of reality, if a thing affects you like that.” Simon Ward shook like jelly when I gave them to him. Taken from The Orton Diaries. 6 Synopsis of Loot We meet Mr McLeavy and his late wife’s nurse the door locked and barricaded, Hal and Dennis Fay McMahon in Mrs McLeavy’s sick room, the brainstorm a plan to hide what must be the family living room, converted. It is the day of the money from the bank robbery. They eventually funeral of Mrs McLeavy. land on swapping the money and Mrs McLeavy. While they work, Dennis reveals he’s been having In this production, Mrs McLeavy is played a liaison with Fay and wants to marry her. A by a live actor, Anah Ruddin! Read about police officer called Truscott has already searched her experience here: https:// Dennis’ house, posing as someone from the www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/ water board. Hal and Dennis take the coffin out sep/07/how-to-play-dead-corpses-view-