The global recession may have had many disastrous consequences, but it has also inspired dramatists to attempt to explain why it happened in the first place.
With September’s looming anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, playwrights have found rich material in the dramatic days leading up to and following the bank’s fall.
David Hare’s new work, The Power of Yes: a dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis , opens at London’s National Theatre in October. The play is billed as a “jaw-dropping account of how, as the banks went bust, capitalism was replaced by a socialism that bailed out the rich alone”.
Nicholas Hytner, the theatre’s director, says the work was commissioned following a “casual conversation” with colleagues in the wake of the financial crisis. “I called David and said, ‘I don’t understand any of this, but it is something I feel I should understand and I bet most of our audience feels the same way – why don’t you try to explain it to them?’.”
The play “stemmed from a belief that one of the things that what an institution like this can and should do is respond immediately to the real world of which it is a part”, Mr Hytner says. “Taking an instant temperature” was an important part of the theatre’s remit.
“What he has delivered is for the benefit of our audience, many of whom may be dedicated readers of the Financial Times and get it, but most of whom will relish this opportunity to be part of a communal investigation,” he said.
Two forthcoming BBC dramas have also been inspired by the tumultuous events of last year.
On BBC2 next month The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, written by Craig Warner and starring James Bolam, Alex Jennings and James Cromwell, recreates the meeting of Wall Street’s biggest investment banks to discuss the bank’s plight and the attempts by Dick Fuld, Lehman chief executive, to organise a rescue.
On the BBC World Service the radio drama The Day That Lehman Died is another fictionalised account of the bank’s momentous collapse. The drama was recorded on location in and around Wall Street with the assistance of WNYC Public Radio in New York.
John Dryden, the play’s director, said the script was based on interviews with bankers, lawyers and senior executives.
“They were happy to talk to us on a background basis, but not to be identified – so to get at what really happened, drama was the only option. People love to follow a blow-by-blow account of real events, to have some indication of who said what and when.”
In the meantime, another part of the theatrical world is doing well out of the recession: comedy. The ticketing agency WeGotTickets has launched a new website, WeGotComedy, to deal with the burgeoning demand to see stand-up acts.
