OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY
And certainly not from a play with any degree of smarts. Other People’s Money isn’t a stupid or mean-spirited piece of work. Conceptually, at least, it’s got a lot in common with The Cherry Orchard. Like Chekhov’s masterpiece, it describes a minor yet resonant moment in the annals of capitalist predation: the dissolution of a gracious but untenable old world, and its replacement by a rough, tough new one ruled by upstarts and money changers.
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But where Chekhov sees the shift tragically, as part of the historic rhythm of exhaustion and renewal, Other People’s Money author Jerry Sterner frames it almost entirely in ethnic terms. In place of Madame Ranevskaya’s sweet ruin of a country estate Sterner offers us a venerable old Yankee manufacturing company called New England Wire and Cable–mainstay of its community for 73 years, run for 38 by a venerable old Yankee named Andrew Jorgenson, whose first power suit was a pair of overalls and whose business philosophy consists of pinching pennies, turning out product, and sticking by his friends.
Even his virtues conform to type. Like Shylock, Garfinkle has a strange but absolute code of honor. An outsider’s sense of integrity. However cynically he plays with others, he never lies to himself. However unprincipled he seems to others, he remains resolutely true to himself. Love him or hate him, Garfinkle is who he is.
Elizabeth Hess seems a little lost, however, as Kate, the shiksa love interest. Despite a tendency to get worked up for no apparent reason, she can’t seem to manifest the drive people say she’s got. David Budries’s rock-industrial sound design, on the other hand, has plenty of drive for everyone.
