Economy of Thought

Patrick McFadden’s play about crisis in the City begins and ends with a joke. This circularity, framed within the toxic, testosterone-loaded environment of an investment banking office, puts forward the suggestion that nothing has really changed at all. Disaster follows disaster and the banking sector ploughs blindly and smugly along the same path it has always trodden.

Unfortunately, this argument is executed with such a heavy hand that any complexity is sacrificed to clumsy point-making. McFadden’s narrative device is a public protest that gets out of hand thanks to the thoughtless arrogance of a group of bankers. This then sets off a series of increasingly strained consequences, as the journalist sister of one of those involved digs for detail and the four culprits scrabble ever more desperately to cover their tracks.

The central question is one of responsibility, casting this one incident as something of a metaphor for the wider financial crisis and the self-serving reaction of the banks implicated at its heart. Subtlety is lacking, however, while lightly sketched characters become empty mouthpieces for McFadden’s debate. Stilted dialogue is met with strained performances, while the crowbarring of a clumsy romantic relationship into the plot only heightens the implausibility.

The City of McFadden’s play is one in which everyone is out for personal gain, painting a damning picture of individuals but never really investigating the structures that support this competitive desire for success. As one character cynically sneers, “all anyone wants is their little slice of the pie.”