Steve Thompson can write. We know that he can write. He wrote brilliant episodes of ‘Sherlock’, he wrote great episodes of ‘Doctor Who’. So what the hell went wrong here? Almost everything in this revival of his 2009 banker-bashing play is disagreeable. None of the characters has any redeeming features; nor, really, does any aspect of Alan Cohen’s production. It’s a boring mash-up of questionable City values and office politics.
Four bond traders wear headsets and make money. One them is new, one of them retires and one of them’s a woman. The fourth, Donny, is sort of the main character. He's a cocky trader who learns that life isn't all about earning money; sometimes it's about having a conversation with your son (about earning money). When the characters aren’t barking banking buzzwords – ‘Buy! Sell! Three mil! Hedge fund!’ – they’re bantering boringly about dick size and clothes. Act two bothers to introduce a plot, such as it is (bonuses, backstabbing), but by that time it’s far too late.
As ageing City boy PJ, Michael McKell overacts drunkenness with an elastic face and unconvincing slur. Meanwhile, Timothy George underacts as a plummy Cambridge grad.
Hideous, garish designs are projected on to the back wall. There’s a cityscape with Canary Wharf in it, a flower, a map of the DLR. They’re like the pictures that come free in photoframes, but photoshopped by a maladroit infant.
The play can’t decide between bamboozling its audience with jargon, and patronising them by introducing a small child to whom trader Donny (Nick Moran) can explain the basic principles of bonds. Apart from a shoe-horned quip about Volkswagen emission tests, this world seems remarkably passé.
Devoid of a third dimension, its characters are held in contempt and its audience more so. What’s its point? Bankers are competitive and sometimes irresponsible? Hardly news, and certainly not worth two hours’ explanation. Heartless, plotless, aimless: this is one seriously bad investment.
BY: TIM BANO