The searing cauldron of greed, dominance, power and treachery on Wall Street, so brilliantly captured in the Michael Douglas film, “Wall Street,” gets another look in Junk, Ayad Akhtar’s drama of life in the 1980s. Although not as precisely tuned as Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, Disgraced, Junk is a tautly conveyed, briskly paced drama that occasionally starts to believe the lies it spins.
The Milwaukee Rep’s artistic director, Mark Clements, directs here. He offers a painful picture of a financial world run amok in the mid-1980s. Clements has the difficult task of choreographing the appearance of 22 actors, many of whom comprise a who’s who of Milwaukee’s acting community (not to mention the stalwarts of Spring Green’s American Players Theater).
Although Junk functions on several levels, it mainly focuses on the imminent takeover of a steel company that has wisely dispersed its investments in more lucrative businesses. The company is run by Tom Everson, Jr. (James Ridge), a proud, third-generation owner of this behemoth, that is still listed on the Dow Industrial Average.
Enter the play’s junk bond king, Bob Merkin (Gregory Linington), who attempts to buy out the steel company’s shareholders with an offer they cannot refuse. Meanwhile, one of the play’s “good guys,” billionaire Leo Tresler (Brian Mani), attempts to sway the shareholders into rejecting Merkin’s offer. However, he is only able to offer so much equity. Merkin goes far beyond the company’s ability to pay back the debt it must raise to tempt shareholders, and he plans on doing it by breaking up the company and keeping only the most profitable enterprises.
Before the “vote,” Everson makes an impassioned speech to his steelworkers. He pledges to do his best to protect some 15,000 steel working jobs on the line. When this fails (after the vote is called), his despair is overwhelming.
The play offers a full portfolio of traders, lawyers, cops, and snitches, all of which do their best to promote the steel company deal, or to squash it. Even some of the good guys, such as Leo Tresler, aren’t completely blameless. He pursues a younger, attractive business writer (Rebecca Hirota) who is trying to get a handle on the craziness surrounding Wall Street markets. Another strong female character is Rachel Sledd as Merkin’s 40-ish wife, who manages to find a flaw in Merkin’s latest target. However, as the mother of an infant, she fears that Merkin might be bending the law too far to his advantage. She wants him to stay out of prison at all costs.
Merkin, however, is bold and brash enough to believe entirely in himself as a creator of great wealth in America. He wheedles and bullies some of his investors (particularly the whiny Murray Lefkowitz) to bring them back into the fold. As Lefkowitz, Milwaukee favorite Norman Moses gives an impressive performance as someone who wants to be a “player” only when the risks aren’t too great. As Merkin, Linington demonstrates how appealing to greed can keep such “nervous Nellies” in the fold. Furthermore, he is an expert at using insider trading to manipulate a stock’s price to his advantage. This is his eventual undoing.
Junk debuted on Broadway more than a year ago at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. The Milwaukee Rep production is the first one in the country to see a substantially trimmed down version of the play. It has been cut by 30 minutes and now lasts a taut two hours (without intermission). It still retains the hallmarks of the larger version, as an epic historical thriller based on greed and the downside of dealing in too much debt, the lifeblood of “junk” bonds that were all the rage in the mid-1980s.
The heightened atmosphere of this world, where “money is the only thing that matters,” according to the business reporter, is beautifully illustrated in ever-changing projections against an impenetrable gray backdrop. The glare of these frenetic cityscapes wash across the gray “cement” slabs, as impermanent as the high-risk “junk” bonds themselves. Credit goes to set designer Todd Edward Ivins, projection designer Jared Mezzocchi and lighting designer Thom Weaver for creating such a strong visual statement.
