The first rule of Predatory Capitalism Club is you do not write plays about Predatory Capitalism Club. Well, except Enron and maybe one or two others. There does, though, seem to be something oddly problematic about trying to say anything original and/or theatrically vibrant concerning the geo-financial events of the last several years.

Beth Steel bends the above rule by tackling the matter through the prism of a few decades ago. Her protagonist John (Sean Delaney) joins an American commercial bank in the late 1970s; he rapidly loses his moral scruples (aided by arguments with his father, a petty fraudster) and learns the business of selling loans to foreign governments, in particular on the Latin American desk. By the second act he is an established salesman (and just a little given to cocaine paranoia) when the region’s debt crisis suddenly breaks in 1982. John formulates the approach which the US and IMF take to the matter, but also grows more and more brittly uncertain not just of what is right but of what is real.

It’s all fairly unexceptional. The territory is quickly established as greed-and-corruption-by-numbers, and the parallels in the second half with recent events are similarly strongly made. The trouble is that they’re not immediately visible as being valid (like most of the audience, I’d never even heard of the Latin American debt crisis before), and need to be argued out rather than simply slapped down before us. Although it’s almost certainly right to avoid getting bogged down in detailed case-making (this isn’t the medium for that), it’s not really any more justifiable simply to hammer the point home as Steel does, to the extent of personifying the IMF as a Lagardesque blonde Frenchwoman. (For a play written and directed by women, even one set in such a macho milieu, it’s noticeable that only two actresses appear, and only in an assortment of minor roles.) Anna Ledwich directs with energy; the... I’m not sure whether it counts as lighting or set design... is far from easy on the eyes. Ultimately, though, Steel has nothing much to say beyond claiming that this has all happened before.

Written for the Financial Times.