Serious Money Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Patricia M. Troxel

Critical Essay by Patricia M. Troxel

SOURCE: "Making Serious Money: Caryl Churchill and Post-Modernist Comedy," in Text and Presentation, edited by Karelisa Hartigan, University Press of America, 1989, pp. 149-59.

Below, Troxel examines Serious Money as a "post-modern comedy of manners. "

Big Bang! Marzipan set! Ivan the Terrible! OIKS! DINKS! OINKS! All terms from the newest Orwellian world—The City, London's financial trading center. The artistic attraction to this staccato, acronymistic, elliptical Cityspeak is matched only by our society's fascination with the crimes of insider dealing, share price manipulation and fraud. From paperback bestsellers on Boeksy and Guinness to Oliver Stone's film Wall Street to recent episodes of Steven Bochco's LA Law, literary and dramatic representations of this financial circus abound. But among such works, Caryl Churchill's play, Serious Money, offers the most provocative, creative, and devastating portrait of high finance.

Much critical interest in this play stems directly from Churchill's staging of the financial world....
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