About the Play:

Where's My Money? has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.

Where's My Money? is a full-length dark comedy by John Patrick Shanley. A chance meeting gives out-of-work actor Celeste and her old acquaintance Natalie an opportunity to catch up. Natalie, an accountant who is married to a lawyer, appears to have her life in order, but in reality she is being haunted by an ex-boyfriend who claims she owes him money. Where's My Money? offers a witty look at the perils of love and money, and how past decisions can haunt our present and dictate the future.

Where's My Money? is about two second-rate Brooklyn divorce lawyers and the women in their lives. When Celeste, a struggling actor, runs into Natalie, a former co-worker, whom she hasn't seen in years, the two have some catching up to do. Celeste, who's cheating on her boyfriend with a married man, confides graphic details of the affair. A righteously indignant Natalie, an accountant married to a lawyer, turns around and reads her the riot act. But Natalie's life is not nearly as together as it appears. In fact, her marriage with Henry, who's as adversarial at home as he is on the job, is hanging by a thread, and she's being visited by the specter of her ex-boyfriend trying to collect on an old debt, asking, "Where's my money?". Meanwhile, it turns out that the married man Celeste is having an affair with is Henry's idol, Sidney, a divorce lawyer with a pet theory that one partner in every marriage will be unfaithful, so it might as well be you. Sardonic and caustic, Where's My Money? vivisects the institution of marriage with John Patrick Shanley's inimitable razor-sharp wit.

Where's My Money? premiered in 2001 at the Center Stage space by LAByrinth Theatre Company off-Broadway in New York, and was subsequently produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) later that year. Since then the popular black comedy had regional premieres at professional theatres across the US, including an L.A. premiere in 2005 at Hudson Guild Theater. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in college theatres.

Cast: 3 female, 3 male

What people say:

"…[a] semi-surrealist comedy about revenge, retribution and the emotional and physical scars of modern relationships…Shanley's gift for acid-laced one-liners and emotionally tumescent exchanges is certainly potent…Where's My Money? suggests some intriguing ideas about the dangerous way men and women work out humiliations and frustrations from their past on their current partners…." — Variety

"John Patrick Shanley's new play about marriage, Where's My Money?, [is] the dramatic equivalent of a vein throbbing in a temple. It's so harsh, it's funny — terrifying, too, but funny…." — New York Times

"…the show is prankish, sly and sexy." — Los Angeles Times

"There are plenty of comic zingers and dramatic situations in Where's My Money?." — Now Magazine (Toronto)

About the Playwright:

John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. He has written some two dozen off-Broadway plays since the 1970s, but he is best known for Doubt, which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award. He has also written extensively for TV and film, and his credits include the teleplay for Live from Baghdad and screenplays for Five Corners and Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for original screenplay.