"I write the truth," declared Joe Orton when people complained that his anarchic 1960s comedies of sex, manners and morals were mere flights of outrageous fantasy. The trouble is that the truth changes with the times, and while Orton's ebullient exposé of bent coppers, murderous nurses and amoral young men might have said things that nobody else was prepared to mouth in 1966, those truths now seem obvious and old hat. Very few people would now have the bereaved Mr McLeavy's lunatic faith in the authority of the police, the pope and the water board. Forty years on, Loot 's modern audience experiences none of the anxiety that its contemporary audience would have felt.
If Bristol wanted to revive an Orton play, it seems odd that they didn't choose What the Butler Saw, Orton's real masterpiece, and still a bit of a shocker. But, while David Farr's production can't make Loot richer than it is, it does treat it as the period piece it is and has the great knack of re-creating all the hypocrisy and contradictions that seethed beneath the genteel surface of 1960s British life.
Tom Piper's design is spot-on, and the whole production cleverly captures the collusion and tensions of two different eras - the wartime mindset and the new, socially slippery world of the swinging 60s. There are two very good performances from Andrew Melville, as a man so guilty of naivety that he must pay the heaviest price, and Clive Francis, whose Inspector Truscott of the Yard is obvious, but no less enjoyable for it. The younger members of the cast have some difficulty in finding their way through Orton's distinctively witty dialogue in which reality and artifice go cheek by jowl.
· Until March 27. Box office: 0117-987 7877.
