FANS OF THE ENTERTAINING MR. ORTON : A Detour Directs Frechette to ‘Loot’

Peter Frechette knew about “Loot.” He knew it was a comedy. He knew it was supposed to be funny.

“But I couldn’t figure it out,” the actor said haplessly. “It was so dense, so thick. It was like, ‘What is this writing? What is this style?’ Then when I was going to the audition there was this horrible accident on the freeway, so I got off and took the side streets. I was so late, I figured it was probably over. But I was really keyed up; I figured why not just go release everything? So I did. I didn’t care anymore. I had a really free and fun audition--and they laughed. And I thought, ‘Jeez, it’s funny !’ ”

Funny enough for him to get the role. Frechette plays the bumbling Hal in Joe Orton’s “Loot” (at the Taper through Aug. 23), a sly and sacrilegious satire about a newly dead body and newly filched booty. “With one or two other things I’ve done, this is the most fun I’ve ever had on stage,” Frechette said happily. “I just love being up there with everyone. It’s as much fun as playing in the sandbox, going down the slide or on the swings--but with a bunch of mean kids. And you’re one of them. It’s like six horrible brats in the playground.”

It also represents quite a stretch from his last stage role, as Horst, the homosexual Dachau inmate in Martin Sherman’s “Bent” (continuing at the Coast Playhouse).

“That was special for all kinds of reasons,” he said. “It was really a juicy role. At first, I didn’t know if I could pull it off. But I was so enamored of the challenge. I always thought it would be such a cathartic, emotional experience for the audience--yet some people said they were depressed for days afterwards. I certainly wasn’t. For me, it was a wonderful release.”

The decision to leave “Bent” for “Loot” was, he admits, partly based on monetary concerns: “Yeah, I’m not rich. I am not even semi-rich. I need to make a living.”

Fortunately, he’s been working a lot lately. Locally, Frechette’s stage credits include “Balm in Gilead,” “Delirious” and “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”; on television he had a standout two-parter last season on “L.A. Law,” as a man on trial for the mercy killing of his AIDS-stricken lover.

He began acting in the second grade, an immediate standout “because I memorized my lines and nobody else did. Then in the third grade I played a Christmas tree in the Christmas pageant--but I was only one of six trees, so it wasn’t that special. Then in the eighth grade I had the lead and everybody said, ‘You’re so funny.’ I loved that. I loved the curtain call, all those people clapping for me, the thought that they loved me--or at least liked me a lot--for five seconds. It was so revealing. A lot of performers may not admit it, but one of the biggest reasons they do this is for the love, the validation.”

Accordingly, early rejection came hard. “I auditioned for a couple of plays in high school and when I didn’t get in, I thought who needs ‘em. Anyway, I intended to be a rock singer. I wasn’t in a band, I didn’t work with anybody, I just walked around singing all the time--at home, in school, on the bus, on the street.” Nevertheless, by the time he entered the University of Rhode Island, “I wasn’t going to be a rock singer anymore. I was going to be an actor. So when I got to college I was a blank slate--no bad habits, but no good ones either. I didn’t know anything .”

After graduation he began working in New York--mostly Off Off Broadway. “For a long time,” he recalled, “casting people and agents had said I wasn’t the least bit commercial.” Any particular reason? “Well, I dressed funny. My hair was funny--for a while it was in spikes--not dirty, just real long. And I had holes in my clothes, very carefully placed holes.” An abrupt end to that existence came when he landed a role in “Grease 2” (starring Maxwell Caulfield, who now plays opposite him in “Loot”).

“Getting that movie revolutionized my life,” Frechette noted. “Talk about having no money! I’d been juggling paying the rent, Con Edison, the phone bill, saying to myself ‘Well, I don’t really have to eat,’ stealing toilet paper from McDonald’s. Then suddenly everything changed. When the movie was coming out, the studio sent us around the country to promote it. We’d fly first class, they’d pick us up in limos and put us in hotels where we could have anything we wanted--food and room service. I just thought it was so cool.”

As for trading in his “serious” stage actor identity for the glossier realm of movie stardom, “That wasn’t a problem,” Frechette dismissed. “In fact, I really wanted that job because I couldn’t think of anything more commercial than ‘Grease 2.’ I thought it was going to be really big, the beginning of my movie career-- baboom! Scripts were going to be flying in: ‘Gee, I wonder what I’ll do next?’ And of course, nothing ever came.”

There are no regrets. “I always see things as being funny--even when they’re tragic, because humor is one of the most important things in my life. It’s a perception of the ironic that has something to do with being from New England. I think it’s a New England trait.”