About
the Play:
Serious Money was one of Royal National Theatre of
Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th century.
Serious Money has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.
Serious Money is a full-length dramatic comedy by Caryl
Churchill. High rolling brother and sister traders Jake and
Scilla enjoy the upper class lifestyle offered by their careers in
the London stock exchange; but when Jake is murdered, Scilla sets out
to find the killer. Friends, colleagues and family become suspects as
Scilla discovers her brother's underground dealings and learns to
play as dirty as he did. Her investigations reveal the power games,
money transactions and deceit of the trading floor.
Serious Money is set in the trading pits and boardrooms of
London's financial district in 1987 soon after the markets are
deregulated, an act referred to as the "Big Bang" for its
explosive impact. In the dog-eat-dog world of London's Stock
Exchange, wunderkind Jake Todd is found shot in his apartment. While
unravelling the mystery of who killed her brother, Scilla begins to
see just how embedded Jake was in the dark underbelly of London's
financial world. Since the "Big Bang", sinister figures
have taken advantage of London's newly deregulated market,
prioritizing profit, greed and personal interests. Corporate raiders
Zackerman and Corman prepare to swoop down on aging company
Albion…with or without the help of a pair of female business
vultures. Amidst the looming threat of investigation, boardroom drug
deals, and billionaire backstabbing, Scilla must decide how much
she'll risk to find her brother's killer and his missing millions. A
dynamic satire written in rhyming couplets, Serious Money was
first staged in 1987, at a time where the fraud and corruption of
Wall Street made the headlines. After the crash of 2008 and the rise
of the 1 percenters, Caryl Churchill's fast-paced look at the
consequences of unchecked greed and ego remains just as familiar
today.
Serious Money premiered in 1987 at the Royal Court Theatre,
transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in the West End and won the best
comedy of the year award from the London Evening Standard in 1987,
the 1987 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the 1987 Laurence
Olivier/BBC Award for best new play. It then transferred to the
Public Theater in New York City with the original British cast. The
limited Off-Broadway run was a sellout hit and won the 1987-1988 Obie
Award for best new play.
Cast: 3 female, 5 male
What people say:
"A dazzler...Smashing."
— The Sunday Express
(London)
"Pure genius." —
The Daily Telegraph
(London)
"Vigorous, aggressive, funny
and much needed." — The Observer (London)
"A tendentious, up to the
minute satire about corruption and insider dealin." — The
Spectator (London)
"Brutally brilliant, savagely
funny and appallingly realistic ...about the bankers...dealers...and
media vulture." — The Sunday Times
(London)
"A breathless, exhilarating
crash course in the low morality of high finance." — The
Independent (London)
"Wants
us to hear the very sound of megascale greed as it is practiced on
that circuit of telephone wires and computer screens blinking 24
hours a day from Tokyo to New York."
— The New York Times
About the Playwright:
Caryl Churchill is widely recognized as one of
the UK's leading playwrights. She was born in London and after the
Second World War her family emigrated to Montreal in Canada. She
returned to England to attend Oxford University and graduated with a
degree in English Literature. One of the most respected dramatists in
the English-speaking world, she is an internationally known
playwright whose work has been given major international theatrical
awards throughout the world.
