See whether this doesn't sound familiar: the CEO of an investment firm skims off the clients' accounts to line his own pockets and those of his family. Upon his death, his son vows to undo these fraudulent practices but is unable to do so without stinting his own kinfolk. When his son inherits the business, however, he vows to put an end to the legacy of corporate double-dealing, even if it means depriving himself, his closest relatives, and his friends of their ill-gotten bounty. If necessary, he declares, he will even - gasp! - confess to the authorities and risk imprisonment.
For as long as capitalism has existed, its proponents have struggled to reconcile its benefits with the propensity to corruption inspired by greed. Charles Dickens proposed that the wealthy contribute to the support of those by whose labor they profited. George Bernard Shaw blithely advocated the notion of our monetary caretakers acting in loco parentis - with our welfare in mind, of course. But playwright Harley Granville-Barker was as skeptical of these utopian ideals in 1905 as was David Mamet in 2005, the latter feeling it high time to adapt the morality fable for our age.
Having built his literary career on portraits of high-rollers, four-flushers and flimflam artists, Mamet knows better than to present us with a hero of unswerving righteousness. Young Edward Voysey, like any crusading warrior, meets with adversity in his efforts to Do The Right Thing. Siblings accuse him of filial disloyalty, whine over their negligibly diminished income, or immure themselves in denial. Counselors condone his intentions but argue his tactics. Employees threaten blackmail. Edward's sole ally is his fiancée, whose wisdom and independence (and refreshingly practical view of her own solvency) serves to remind him that money is, after all, only money.
This brand of symposial debate is the Remy Bumppo Theater Company's stock-in-trade. Under James Bohnen's direction, a cast led by Raymond Fox as the determined Edward and Roderick Peeples as his chief antagonist (with smart and stylish work from Rebecca Spence as the savvy woman who stands by her man after he has proven himself worthy) deliver performances as tidy and durable, intellectually, as the comfortably-sumptuous home replicated by designers Andrea Bechert and Ann Meilahn, visually. In the end, each of the characters - and we, too - have come to realize the pervasive dangers of accumulated wealth and the caution required of those who would brave its temptations.
