Writer: Caryl Churchill
Directors: Douglas and Charlotte Taylor
“Fortune favours the bold” is an old saying by the Roman poet Virgil. And little has changed since then or in the 1980s, according to how relevant Caryl Churchill’s blistering satire Serious Money — first staged in 1987 — still feels today. It’s a snappy, unrelenting attack in rhyme upon Thatcher’s unleashing of the London Stock Exchange, an event that became known as the ‘big bang’ of corporate corruption and greed. The Courtyard Theatre’s adaptation staged by the Taylor siblings is fearsome, and one is advised to catch one’s breath in the interval if one can.
Churchill’s script has one and only one beating heart. That is Scilla, a futures trader caught in the mess of verse, wheeler-dealers and cocaine-snorting traders, and does all she can to investigate the death of her brother, Jake. The rest of our fellow 40 characters for the evening are less than savoury. Always up for a quick buck, they attempt to land the deal of a lifetime during the takeover of a less-than-legit firm conveniently named Albion (surely a nod to England’s ancient name).
These characters feel dangerously familiar. It’s difficult not to think of the current fuel crises when Zak Zackerman (Ben Pugh-Cook), a sleazy American banker, lists the profits to be made off raising prices in oil. “One makes money from other people’s disasters,” claims the chorus after all, with their magnificent ability to jump and slice through the stage’s space in this production.
This version captures the swing of Churchill’s poetry and, surely aware that verse is a bloody hard battle to do on stage, comes up with its fists punching on every line. It’s a circus act of verbal and physical acrobatics, making a complete fugazi of the banking scene, which more often than not is an unforgiving triumph of the very first order.
One only wishes for a fuller stage, a little tinkering with the lighting and some sharper-cut timing when actors come on or off. Yasser Kayani is a delight when playing all of the bank’s oddest characters, named Duckett, Frosby or Grevett, and he has a marvellous expressive ability with his face. But set movements need to be snappier; the play cannot lose pace — it certainly cannot pause. The script works best when it’s a boxer that’s got his audience in the corner of the ring. Individual performances across the board are good, group work is equally gripping, but this ship still needs to tighten its rigging and timing.
If Churchill adds one thing to that famous Latin line made over 2,000 years ago, it’s that fortune does favour the bold, but it’s just as sure to favour the bad too.
Runs until 19 September 2026
