About the work
Loot is a play by the British playwright Joe Orton, first performed on 1 February 1965 at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge. Its German-language premiere, titled "Beute," followed on 9 March 1966 at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, directed by Hansgünther Heyme.
Plot
No sooner has Mrs McLeavy died than her nurse Fay, who has already done away with several previous husbands, pushes the widowed McLeavy toward remarriage. Meanwhile his son Hal and Hal's friend Dennis hide the proceeds of a bank robbery inside her coffin, while her body itself ends up stuffed in a wardrobe. When the corrupt Inspector Truscott investigates the case, he chooses not to arrest the culprits but to claim a share of the loot for himself.
Cultural significance
A satirical farce taking aim at bourgeois hypocrisy, Catholic mourning ritual and police corruption, it ranks alongside "Entertaining Mr Sloane" among Orton's most influential plays and was filmed in 1969 under the German title "Die größten Gauner weit und breit."