Final casting is announced today for the 50th anniversary production of Joe Orton’s darkly comic masterpiece, LOOT.
Joining the previously announced rising British stars Calvin Demba, Sam Frenchum and the award-winning Sinéad Matthews are Christopher Fulford, Ian Redford and Raphael Bar with Anah Ruddin.
LOOT – from the same producers as the recent sell-out hit The Boys in the Band – is directed by Michael Fentiman, whose credits include two acclaimed shows for the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as the critically-acclaimed hit, Raising Martha.
It will run at London’s Park Theatre from 17 August – 24 September. It will then transfer to the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, Berkshire, from 28 September – 21 October.
When it premiered five decades ago, LOOT shocked and delighted audiences in equal measure and it scooped the Best Play of the Year Award in the 1967 Evening Standard Awards. This production commemorates three 50-year anniversaries: Joe Orton’s death on 9 August 1967; LOOT’s first award-winning West End season at the Criterion Theatre; and the momentous, transformative passing in July 1967 of The Sexual Offences Act, which partially decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of 21.
