By, John Nathan
1 min read
David Hare’s financial crisis play is inevitably to be compared with the brilliant Enron, Lucy Prebble’s recent corporate disaster play.
Both dramas are brimful of facts and bewildering figures. But while Prebble’s play scores by delivering a tale about the people behind a meltdown, Hare’s fails to humanise his economic lesson.
His protagonist is a Hare-like figure called The Author — played by Anthony Calf — a brown casual jacket in a sea of suited bankers, financiers and other affluent City types. The Author asks them questions about how it all went wrong. Their answers are informative, but hardly riveting. When The Author inquires of his audience: “Where were you on September 15, 2008?” the question suggests that the day Lehamn Brothers went bankrupt was as dramatic as the day Kennedy was killed. Yet Angus Jackson’s production, decorated by a massive electronic display and populated by a huge cast of 27, never delivers on that dramatic promise.
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