Toxic Bankers, Leicester Square Theatre - review

A City caper with so little profit
Passions stirred: from left, Joe (Stuart Saint) clashes with Susanna (Kimberley Eyles) in front of bombastic boss Tony (Jonathan Dryden Taylor)
Bruce Dessau18 March 2012

Enron it definitely is not. If Lucy Prebble’s award-winning dissection of corporate finance showed that there is high drama to be found in economic meltdown, writer/director Andrew Taylor’s musical comedy about City greed tries to mix message, melody and amusement. There are brief flashes of wit and some passable tunes but not enough for bonuses all round.

The action is set in the cramped offices of SMS Ethical Investments, who make profits for bombastic boss Tony (Jonathan Dryden Taylor) without compromising their integrity. Fiona (Hazel Gardner) is the bright spark who senses something is up, while hedonistic gay coke-head Joe (Stuart Saint) keeps his head down. Tony then motivates his team further by hiring a concierge firm, Personal Liberty, to organise their lives.

Clashes, however, loom when Personal Liberty oversteps the organisational mark, with Susanna (Kimberley Eyles) servicing Joe’s boyfriend. Tony, meanwhile, turns out to have acquired all of Greece except for the Acropolis. Ethical capitalism, an oxymoron at the best of times, flies out the door. Despite a few surprises after the interval, this production rarely produces giggles. For a subject so fertile for comedy it misses umpteen open goals.

The seven performers work hard on a tiny budget and the music, by cabaret performer Desmond O’Connor, runs the gamut from pop to Sondheim but mostly plays it Lloyd Webber-lite. The best number comes when the concierges try to ply Fiona with the anti-depressant Fluoxetine. The show is almost worth seeing for O’Connor finding words to rhyme with Fluoxetine. Almost but not quite.

Until April 14 (08448 733433, leicestersquaretheatre.com)

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