Money Talks
Forgive me for admitting this, but when a play is potential-filled yet misbegotten, I drift off and analyze the set. I don't mean I drift for hours or minutes, but when you know a piece is misfiring, bewildering or just plain unfortunate-like Burleigh Grimes at New World Stages-an intriguing set design serves as a soothing salve.
Roger Kirby's play is staged frenetically by David Warren, and the incidental music, by the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels composer David Yazbek, is just percussive and repetitive enough to give the production a feeling of constant motion. The title character (played by Mark Moses of Desperate Housewives) is a world-class stock trader and world-class misogynistic jackass. Grimes also has a pair of puppy-dog protégés, Hap (Jason Antoon) and Buck (John Lavelle), nipping at his heels.
Grimes' grimy disregard for fiscal propriety is his mark of distinction: He regularly delivers to Elizabeth Bigley (Wendie Malick), the most influential business reporter on TV (and formerly his girlfriend), hot stock tips, in order to make markets rise and fall as he wishes them to, and for all the insiders to thereby profit as a result.
Yet it is hiring George Radbourn (James Badge Dale) that is Grimes' finest scam. Radbourn's father did Grimes wrong long ago as Grimes scratched and clawed his immoral ass up the seamy ladder of success, and since George happens to possess none of his father's business acumen, he's the perfect patsy for Grimes to set him up. How better to exact revenge than to get the son of your enemy a prison term? If Elizabeth hadn't hired George's former girlfriend Grace (Ashley Williams) as her assistant, George might well have been swallowed up whole by Grimes' machinations.
Now, let's forget that the plot and the characters' dynamics are convenient-as in any industry, Wall Street is a tiny universe, especially for the biggest players. Let's forget, too, that the storyline takes eons to unfurl, that the script is burdened with clichés and that the actors aren't doing much in terms of actual acting. Take Malick, for example, who on Just Shoot Me played an acid slut with boozy hilarity, and who plays the same tough-as-plastic-nails role here-not exactly a stretch. Ditto Nancy Anderson as both a dumb exotic dancer and Grimes' ditzy wife. On and on: George's is too naïve, Grace is too goody-goody, Grimes is too unredeemable and Hap and Buck are?two awful names for characters. Lavelle finds interesting ways of playing his role as a baby banker, but even his twitchy innovations are flattened by the script.
James Youman's set, however, is like aloe on a dramaturgical wound. At left and right are band areas-two drummers, two guitars, one keyboard, one bass-and since there's so much incidental music during which characters dance (Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography is finely flitty), smartly designed modular set pieces interlock with ease. At center are formidable double doors that softly, slickly open, and then there's that fun second level to the set where Elizabeth's broadcasts occur. There, amusing projections sometimes offer a distraction from a cascade of jokes about Wall Street and Republicans. I didn't know that was possible, of course, but now, truly, I'm all set.