| LOOT |
| Written by Sian Rafferty |
| Monday, 02 November 2009 12:10 |
 ‘LOOT’ harks back to the days when you could tunnel into a bank, hide the cash in a bag with a huge money sign on it... and still be home for tea. A time when women of no means could be expected to attach herself to a man of means regardless of his age, and would have never have been considered a gold digger; simply a successful young woman. A time of black and white television, and police inspectors who roll up and said "ello, ello, what have we here?" Yes, they were simpler times indeed. ‘Loot', the new play from the Silo Theatre Company presents everything that was good about the saucy, un-politically correct days gone past. And the results are definitely sometimes shocking, sometimes perplexing, but at all times belly-slappingly funny. The general premise is this: McLeavy (David McPhail), an aged Catholic Irishman and his son Hal (David Van Horn) have just lost their respective wife and mother. On the day of the funeral, Hal and his partner-in-crime Dennis (Charlie McDermott), needing somewhere to stash some cash from a recent bank robbery, come up with the ingenious plan of hiding the money in the coffin. Mixed up with it all is Fay McMahon (Mia Blake) the late Mrs McLeavy’s nurse who has designs of her own with the newly single master of the house. To cap it all off, is the snooping and sneering Inspector Truscott (Cameron Rhodes) who comes along with his pipe and magnifying glass to sniff around the house. Trust me, hilarity ensues. 'Loot' really was written for a time when ‘boys would be boys’ and Hal and Dennis embrace this wholeheartedly. Both Van Horn and McDermott play their parts to perfection, moving seamlessly between combing back their slick hair and chasing birds, to practically pulling out their teeth in terror that they will be caught. Blake as the femme fatale Fay McMahon who manages to bewitch and bedazzle almost every man in the household with her buxom charms, is totally convincing as a nun-turned-husband-snarling-man-trap. However the real star of the play would have to be Rhodes, as Inspector Truscott. If you have seen the publicity stills for this play, you would have seen his bushy and proud handlebar moustache. This led me to believe that he would be a comical, 'Pink Panther' sort of character. Oh how I was wrong, for Rhodes truly is a master of disguise. For starters he shaved off the moustache for the play and emerges as a sneaky, beady, little man, constantly filling the theatre with tension at what he could deduce next. This is, quite literally, a man would could smell crime on the air. ‘Loot’ is a bit of fun and frivolity, with a distinctly harsh and ironic edge. A social commentary on the London police of the sixties mixed in with the playful banter of well meaning young men who just want to have fun. Showing now at the Herald Theatre from October 22nd – November 21st. |
