What would Shakespeare have done with the masters of the universe? Here I am on the South Bank of the Thames in London, in Britain’s National Theatre, only a quarter mile from the reconstructed Globe Theatre of Shakespeare’s day. I’m at a performance of The Power of Yes, a new play by David Hare about the financial meltdown. Shakespeare dealt with the meltdowns of his day by using allegory and, with the pathologies of the English monarchy, by appearing to deal with those of the past (Plantagenets, Tudors) while obviously implying lessons for those occupying the throne at the time, without incurring their wrath and censorship. (The original Globe was sited on the South Bank to escape policing by the touchy Lord Mayors of London who viewed the theatre as a branch of a bawdy lowlife—as it was—and whose authority ended at the north bank of the river.) No need today to fear censorship from anyone when spearing bankers and hedge fund managers.
All Hare had to fear is the prolixity of the subject. Indeed, one of the revelations of his play is how successfully vast swindles were concealed by their deliberate complexity. Mathematical formulas for wealth creation are shown on stage, chalked on a blackboard by a Nobel Laureate in economics, prideful of his work only a week or two before, in Alan Greenspan’s words, “the whole edifice collapsed.”
The London critics were befuddled by The Power of Yes. They found it more polemic than play, lacking in developed characters and too dense in form. In my view, they were the ones who were dense.
The play is built on the conceit of the playwright himself interviewing
scores of the money men, as well as financial journalists—most of
them from the Financial Times, most notably the columnist Gillian Tett.
He begins by admitting his ignorance of capitalism’s apparatus but also
by displaying his moral outrage at its consequences. In the course of
an hour and a half (no interval) we get to see one theme very clearly:
Every player has a theory of what went wrong but it was always someone
else’s fault.
George Soros appears at regular intervals to speak as a tribune, playing the great wizard of finance who kept his hands clean and, apart from one costly move, his fortune intact. (A sub theme, not entirely convincing, implies that European refugees from Nazism and Communism, having encountered real fear at first hand, are better able to calibrate the balance of fear and greed that drives the financial casino.) The play is so current (Hare regularly updates it) that it leaves no doubt that the bankers are recidivists. They are already back in the game touting new innovations—a word so debased by them as to require a health warning of its own.
If you are looking for a prologue that revealed deeply psychotic financial behavior before the crash, it was the implosion of the Texan energy company Enron. Here, too, a British dramatist has gone undaunted into the swamp and created a sell-out drama. ENRON is an astonishingly accomplished work by Lucy Prebble, only her second play. It has eviscerating portraits of ENRON’s three major conspirators, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andy Fastow. It was Fastow, chanting the mantra “all money is debt”, who dreamed up an accounting black hole into which all Enron’s losses were pumped, and it was Fastow who held California hostage to inflated electricity prices. Tom Goodman-Hill plays Fastow breaking a stinky sweat as the socially maladroit sycophant who lures the arrogant Skilling into his scheme. And what a brittle, doomed soul is Sam West’s rendition of Skilling, taking the journey from a pumped-up ruthless financial “innovator” to a suddenly crumpled, self-pitying blob of whey. Sitting in the second row of the stalls, I feared he might drip my way.
Percussive musical numbers propel the drama, including an inspired show-stopping piece of slapstick featuring Lehman Brothers as Groucho-like singing and dancing twins sharing the same overcoat. Prebble strips all dignity from not just the characters but the whole financial system, and once dignity has gone the naked malignity is left on stage and becomes that much clearer to see and understand—a trick of moral striptease that financial journalism has never managed, and which even Hare falls short of achieving. I saw ENRON at the Royal Court Theatre, which has a storied history as a crucible of subversive British drama (Hare was once its resident dramatist). ENRON will soon move to London’s West End and, I suspect, ultimately to Broadway.
Which leaves a fundamental question: Why is it that we need to go to London to see work of this calibre and relevance? British dramatists have successfully seized this American-designed tragedy and portrayed it for what it really is, a contemptible breakdown of decent and civilized behavior by a new, avaricious class that feels above the normal laws of equity, fiscal as well as social. One thing is for sure, in London, where the financial conspiracy was every bit as contagious as on Wall Street, political theatre is as thriving as it was in Shakespeare’s day—without the censorship and allusiveness. Political theatre this good makes you mad as hell.
George Soros appears at regular intervals to speak as a tribune, playing the great wizard of finance who kept his hands clean and, apart from one costly move, his fortune intact. (A sub theme, not entirely convincing, implies that European refugees from Nazism and Communism, having encountered real fear at first hand, are better able to calibrate the balance of fear and greed that drives the financial casino.) The play is so current (Hare regularly updates it) that it leaves no doubt that the bankers are recidivists. They are already back in the game touting new innovations—a word so debased by them as to require a health warning of its own.
If you are looking for a prologue that revealed deeply psychotic financial behavior before the crash, it was the implosion of the Texan energy company Enron. Here, too, a British dramatist has gone undaunted into the swamp and created a sell-out drama. ENRON is an astonishingly accomplished work by Lucy Prebble, only her second play. It has eviscerating portraits of ENRON’s three major conspirators, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andy Fastow. It was Fastow, chanting the mantra “all money is debt”, who dreamed up an accounting black hole into which all Enron’s losses were pumped, and it was Fastow who held California hostage to inflated electricity prices. Tom Goodman-Hill plays Fastow breaking a stinky sweat as the socially maladroit sycophant who lures the arrogant Skilling into his scheme. And what a brittle, doomed soul is Sam West’s rendition of Skilling, taking the journey from a pumped-up ruthless financial “innovator” to a suddenly crumpled, self-pitying blob of whey. Sitting in the second row of the stalls, I feared he might drip my way.
Percussive musical numbers propel the drama, including an inspired show-stopping piece of slapstick featuring Lehman Brothers as Groucho-like singing and dancing twins sharing the same overcoat. Prebble strips all dignity from not just the characters but the whole financial system, and once dignity has gone the naked malignity is left on stage and becomes that much clearer to see and understand—a trick of moral striptease that financial journalism has never managed, and which even Hare falls short of achieving. I saw ENRON at the Royal Court Theatre, which has a storied history as a crucible of subversive British drama (Hare was once its resident dramatist). ENRON will soon move to London’s West End and, I suspect, ultimately to Broadway.
Which leaves a fundamental question: Why is it that we need to go to London to see work of this calibre and relevance? British dramatists have successfully seized this American-designed tragedy and portrayed it for what it really is, a contemptible breakdown of decent and civilized behavior by a new, avaricious class that feels above the normal laws of equity, fiscal as well as social. One thing is for sure, in London, where the financial conspiracy was every bit as contagious as on Wall Street, political theatre is as thriving as it was in Shakespeare’s day—without the censorship and allusiveness. Political theatre this good makes you mad as hell.
They are already back in the game touting new innovations—a word so debased by them as to require a health warning of its own.
David From PayDay Loans Blog.