The Power of Yes - A dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis

Synopsis

A dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis. In retrospect is it fair to say that the idea that banks could manage risk was a total illusion? On 15 September 2008, capitalism came to a grinding halt. As sub-prime mortgages and toxic securities continued to dominate the headlines, this spring the National Theatre asked David Hare to write an urgent and immediate work to be staged this autumn that sought to find out what had happened, and why. Capitalism works when greed and fear are in the correct balance. This time they got out of balance. Too much greed, not enough fear. Meeting with many of the key players from the financial world, David Hare, author of The Permanent Way and Stuff Happens, has created The Power of Yes: a compelling narrative, as enlightening as it is entertaining. It’s like a ship which you’re being told is in apple-pie order, the decks are cleaned, the metal is burnished, the only thing nobody mentions: it’s being driven at full speed towards an iceberg. Not so much a play as a jaw-dropping account of how, as the banks went bust, capitalism was replaced by a socialism that bailed out the rich alone.

Our Review:

Judi Herman - 7 October 2009

“This isn’t a play. It’s a story” declares Anthony Calf’s Author to launch David Hare’s bid to get to grips with how the stuff of the world economic meltdown happened. If anything, Hare tells two stories, both absorbing and indeed amounting less to a play (it’s fittingly subtitled “a dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis”), more to reportage. There’s the story of the crisis itself, and the story of his efforts to understand it as he engages with multi-national financiers, economists, academics, journalists – and even the man from the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, all real people, most well-known names.

In just under two hours they trace the complexities of this fall from grace of banks and bankers in ways that the self-confessed financially ignorant Author, who raises eyebrows when he admits to keeping his money in the Post Office, can understand. Which, of course, means that anyone in the audience not in the world of finance (and I suspect plenty at press night were ...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

Lost in France - 3 November 2009:

I agree that it is interesting in parts, but in all honestly I was very disappointed by this even the staging seemed poor...

Read more and add your own review

Related Whatsonstage.com Articles

Review Round-Up: Critics Say Yes to Hare Power? More»