David Bryan Jackson on Playing Inspector Truscott in LOOT at Edge of the Universe Theater

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The DC-area veteran returns to Edge of the Universe Theater for Joe Orton's deadpan black comedy, running June 5 through June 28 at Gunston Arts Center in Arlington.

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Edge of the Universe Theater is bringing Joe Orton 's wickedly subversive black comedy LOOT to Gunston Arts Center's Theatre Two in Arlington, Virginia, for a limited run from June 5 through June 28, 2026. Directed by Stephen Jarrett , the production follows two young men who rob a bank and stash the money in a coffin, setting off a chain of anarchic events involving a crooked police inspector, a predatory nurse, and a grieving widower. First staged in 1965, the play remains a master class in controlled chaos and razor-sharp anti-authoritarian satire.

Taking on the role of the spectacularly corrupt Inspector Truscott is David Bryan Jackson , one of Washington's most versatile and long-tenured stage actors. A veteran of Arena Stage , The Kennedy Center, Woolly Mammoth, Folger Theatre , Studio Theatre, Signature Theatre, and Olney Theatre Center, among many others, Jackson has also appeared with Edge of the Universe in A NUMBER, THE CARETAKER, ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE, and LAUGHTER IN THE SHADOW OF THE TREES. Earlier this year he was seen in BREAKING THE CODE at Central Square Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

His work spans directing, composing, and sound design in addition to acting, and his on-screen credits include AMC's TURN: WASHINGTON'S SPIES and the title role in the award-winning short film UNLOVED.

BroadwayWorld spoke with Jackson about his decades-long history with the play, finding the dark volatility beneath Truscott's comic surface, and what Orton's 60-year-old satire has to say to audiences in 2026.

What drew you to the role of Truscott in LOOT, and what do you find most compelling about playing a corrupt police inspector in Joe Orton 's world?

I first read LOOT when I was 15, and I directed (and read the role of Hal in) a staged reading of it at my school. I was greatly taken with Orton's irreverent style and Wildean wit; however, despite the universal truth that one knows everything at 15, I suspect that there were some layers of nuance and analogy in the text that I missed at that age. While Truscott is on one level a pastiche, combining elements of Christie, Conan Doyle, and innumerable British TV police inspectors, there's also something scarily dark and volatile within him. With any comic character in a farce, the challenge is to find a balance between playing the immediate absurdity of the situation and delivering the precisely-tuned dialogue, while rooting the character in a degree of credibility into which the audience can (not necessarily comfortably) settle. In playing him, I can't concern myself with adjectives like "corrupt." Like many people given unfettered authority, he pursues his opportunities as he encounters them, cutting his losses along the way, in order to remain as close to the top of the food chain as he can be.

How does it feel to be returning to Edge of the Universe Theater for LOOT after your previous productions with the company, and how has your working relationship with the theater evolved?

I've been fortunate to act in plays that mean a lot to me with the company, ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE, THE CARETAKER, A NUMBER, so I'm grateful for the repeated opportunity to play challenging characters.

Truscott is a character who operates with complete moral impunity. How do you approach finding the humanity, or perhaps the lack of it, in a character like that?

By looking for traits in the character that are common to almost everyone. We all have traces of greed, arrogance, pettiness, and impatience, mostly driven by fear and insecurity. Some people are better at controlling such impulses; others seem to revel in displaying them when the checks and balances of the system in which they operate appear to have been removed.

Director Stephen Jarrett has described LOOT as " Oscar Wilde meets Monty Python." How does that vision inform your performance as Truscott?

Well, clearly Wilde was a major influence on Orton, and I suspect that Orton was somewhat an influence on the Pythons, who were starting to write and perform around the time of Orton's early successes. Having acted in Wilde plays before, I recognize lines in the text that cry out for a similar delivery in order to land their punchlines.

Joe Orton wrote LOOT with a very specific deadpan style. How do you balance the farcical physical comedy with the razor-sharp dialogue the play demands?

The essential nature of a successful farce lies in taking an everyday situation and injecting into it one or more factors that inevitably lead the whole to the brink of chaos, on which the characters, driven by their own agendas, attempt to regain control. For an actor, the task is to play all that while maintaining momentum, at the same time as speaking each line with the intention, rhythm, and emphasis they imply, all the while clinging to the internal (albeit perhaps twisted) logic of the play.

LOOT has been described as having a timely anti-authoritarian message. How do you see that message resonating with audiences in 2026?

Orton was writing 60 years ago, and Sophocles 2,500 years ago. In between, there have been many other playwrights who illustrated the dangers of untrammelled power, Shakespeare, Gogol, Ibsen, Shaw, and Miller, to name but a very few. Audiences can interpret the play any way they like. If it increases their vigilance and inspires them to take steps to prevent the depressing repetition of history, more power to them.

Truscott spends much of the play hiding his true identity and motivations. What is the challenge of playing a character who is constantly performing a role within the play itself?

We all play different roles, according to the situations in which we find ourselves throughout our daily lives. In Truscott's case, the challenge lies in the fact that while he may believe he is "a master of disguise," at various stages in the play every other character sees through this, and the audience does from the start.

What do you want audiences who may be unfamiliar with Joe Orton to know about LOOT before they come to see the show at Gunston Arts Center this June?

As an audience member, I prefer to come to any play with as little information about it as possible, so I can experience it without preconceived expectations. At most, I would say: LOOT is a farce, written and set in mid-1960s England.

Why should audiences come and see the show?

I wouldn't presume to tell an audience what they must do. However, this is a rare chance to see a classic of mid-20th century British theatre, with many resonances for our own times, and a lot of good laughs to boot.

LOOT runs June 5 through June 28, 2026 at Gunston Arts Center, Theatre Two, 2700 S. Lang St., Arlington, VA. Tickets are $25 and available at www.edgeuniversetheater.org .

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/washington-dc/article/Interview-David-Bryan-Jackson-On-LOOT-at-Edge-of-the-Universe-Theater-20260610)._