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Junk: The Golden Age of Debt: A Play
A fast-paced economic thriller that probes the financial deal making behind the mergers and acquisitions boom of the 1980s
The Deal. The Board Room. The Takeover. This is the battleground where titanic egos collide, where modern day kings are made and unmade. It's a world where debt is an asset and assets are excuses for more debt, a world where finance runs the show. An upstart genius hell-bent on rocketing to the top, Robert Merkin has established himself as the most successful junk bond trader in the business. His next move-the take-over of a venerable multinational steel corporation-may signal the end of his reign as the king of finance. But how can he lose at a game when he's the only one making the rules?
With JUNK, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ayad Akhtar takes us back to the hotbed of the '80s, offering us an origin story for the cutthroat world that finance has shaped and a dark, provocative take on the joys and sorrows of capitalist society.
The Deal. The Board Room. The Takeover. This is the battleground where titanic egos collide, where modern day kings are made and unmade. It's a world where debt is an asset and assets are excuses for more debt, a world where finance runs the show. An upstart genius hell-bent on rocketing to the top, Robert Merkin has established himself as the most successful junk bond trader in the business. His next move-the take-over of a venerable multinational steel corporation-may signal the end of his reign as the king of finance. But how can he lose at a game when he's the only one making the rules?
With JUNK, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ayad Akhtar takes us back to the hotbed of the '80s, offering us an origin story for the cutthroat world that finance has shaped and a dark, provocative take on the joys and sorrows of capitalist society.
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Published September 1, 2017
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About the author
Ayad Akhtar
21 books937 followersAyad Akhtar is a playwright, novelist, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the author of American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), published in over 20 languages and named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within. Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient the Steinberg Playwrighting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as well as fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at PEN/America and New York Theatre Workshop.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
December 24, 2017
Adesso: 'Nobody understands this shit. Nobody cares about it." p. 46
That about sums up this play. Although I have liked all of Akhtar's previous plays, this one has some built in complications, beginning with the subject matter, which, even though Akhtar does a heroic job of dumbing it down enough for even non-financial wizards to semi-get - it still is a bunch of scenes about people making financial deals. In that, it is like the movie 'The Big Short', which although well done, was not exactly riveting either.
The larger problem though, is that there are 18 named characters, and it is difficult, at least on the page, to remember who everyone is (Akhtar on two occasions resorts to saying something along the lines of 'Remember this is the same guy from 30 minutes ago who did...' in the stage directions). And although he goes to pains to offer rather detailed descriptions of who each character is in a listing of such before the play proper, NONE of them have much defining characteristics WITHIN the play...they are mere symbols to move around on his gigantic chessboard. Although it's more or less an ensemble piece, it also suffers from the main protagonist being the anti-hero (apparently modeled after Michael Milken), and the one 'good guy' (spoiler alert!), offing himself 2/3s of the way through the play. Reviews for the Broadway production have not been kind, and I can see why.
That about sums up this play. Although I have liked all of Akhtar's previous plays, this one has some built in complications, beginning with the subject matter, which, even though Akhtar does a heroic job of dumbing it down enough for even non-financial wizards to semi-get - it still is a bunch of scenes about people making financial deals. In that, it is like the movie 'The Big Short', which although well done, was not exactly riveting either.
The larger problem though, is that there are 18 named characters, and it is difficult, at least on the page, to remember who everyone is (Akhtar on two occasions resorts to saying something along the lines of 'Remember this is the same guy from 30 minutes ago who did...' in the stage directions). And although he goes to pains to offer rather detailed descriptions of who each character is in a listing of such before the play proper, NONE of them have much defining characteristics WITHIN the play...they are mere symbols to move around on his gigantic chessboard. Although it's more or less an ensemble piece, it also suffers from the main protagonist being the anti-hero (apparently modeled after Michael Milken), and the one 'good guy' (spoiler alert!), offing himself 2/3s of the way through the play. Reviews for the Broadway production have not been kind, and I can see why.
August 31, 2024
A play about finance? Not something I would ordinarily pick up, let alone want to devour, and yet being totally enamored of Ayad Akhtar's writing I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into this. A harsh look at the "now", by looking at the "then". Told through the lens of the Junk Bond market in the 80s, Akhtar has managed to illustrate how our country got to be where it is today. At times very uncomfortable, but always enlightening Junk moves along like a thriller...and the ending of Act II will cause audible gasps. Akhtar, in my thinking, is one of our greatest playwrights, giving us a unique lens into America. (4/18)
A second reading of this tome of a play confirms my original review. Akhtar can take the most complicated and layered of subjects and not only teach the reader something, but enthrall, entertain, horrify and feel. Simply put Akhtar and his work are brilliant! (8/24)
A second reading of this tome of a play confirms my original review. Akhtar can take the most complicated and layered of subjects and not only teach the reader something, but enthrall, entertain, horrify and feel. Simply put Akhtar and his work are brilliant! (8/24)
January 3, 2025
Ayad Akhtar manages to write an interesting play which leaves the reader unsure on who to side with. Although dialogues are fast, never boring and the pace is good, one who doesn't know something about the world of finance will surely get lost.
June 2, 2018
Wow! Just wow! Mr. Akhtar knows how to relay a thriller and write with such urgency and relevance. The characters and action are so well defined, and this a joy to read!!
October 30, 2021
This play is more exciting than I expected. Following the Wall Street lingo is tough and confusing. All the deal making is stressful but I enjoyed the characters and the dialogue. The bad guy ends up in jail like Bernie Madoff so that is satisfying!
November 24, 2017
Since I live in Northern California and this play is currently on a brief run in Lincoln Center in NYC, I'm not able to attend a performance. Its great, therefore, that I could, at least, read it.
So back in the 1980's we, as a society, moved into the world of living on debt, not just the junk bond debt that is the focus of this work but also personal debt like credit card debt. While we'd had mortgage debt for awhile, it could be taken farther, into equity credit.
The play highlights that, when this break-through began it seemed horrific--companies, with attendant jobs and families and communities dependent on them for decades--were being broken apart for the benefit of shareholders. How could such an horror even be mentally processed by someone born and raised in a steel town, for example?
Yet looking at the situation from the year 2917, which this play allows us to do, we understand that certain companies--given international competition and technological advances--were simply dying and there was nothing anyone could do about it. What the junk bond kings were doing, was simply speeding up that process but not by much. And while speeding up the process benefited themselves it also moved everyone touched by the process more quickly into a future they would eventually have to face anyway.
Also from 2017, we can see that debt does allow people to live now at a higher level than if they had to wait until they could afford everything they wanted to purchase. We saw this back with the first 30 year mortgages for homes, where if a family wanted to pay cash for a house they might have to save for thirty years. And that's only if the house did not go up that much in value over those thirty years. And even if they could buy the house at the end of the thirty years, they would have lost thirty years of life--before getting that house.
And there was a democratization about this. For example, a person with a down payment and a person with the full purchase price could both buy, and then live in, new homes at the same time.
Still there is a fear that arises at the idea of living with debt and an anger with those who have lived well with debt and then avoided paying it off via bankruptcy.
The play moves among these feelings.
Some great lines:
"A man is a funny thing...A man IS what he HAS. That's the truth. Nobody wants to admit it. Everybody wants to say it's something else. Something more noble. But it's not. What a man HAS is what makes him in the eyes of the world, and in his own eyes. (Beat) And the last thing a man wants to feel is that there's another man over there who has what he doesn't..."
This volume includes a great discussion with the author at the end. Some of his thoughts:
I wanted to make the audience "experience the consequences of this thrilling buzz of making money that leaves us all impoverished in some spiritual way."
Does wealth connote celebrity? "It connotes more than that. It's ontology. Wealth is existential, wealth connotes BEING. One doesn't EXIST as a citizen in this advanced, late-captalist moment without wealth. One has no AGENCY without wealth. We exist in the grip of a corporate financial vise that squeezes everybody. I think that the aspect of wealth as a kind of measure of celebrity speaks to the way in which wealth is the only value we aspire to."
"The play is called "Junk" but its' not about junk bonds. The play is about the moment in American history when our relationship to debt changed." How our thoughts/feelings around money changed at a certain moment in our history. "The real innovation of junk bonds...was to create possibility" and allowing more people to sit at the table--or own a house.
The problem is that we've now come to a world where the earning on labor--the work of actually making things--will only be around 2%. In contrast the earnings from capitol--having money invested and earning dividends, benefiting from a stock market rise, getting rents--will be around 5%. This was also Thomas Pinketty's essential message. But what kind of world does that leave us with where the people who are actually making the things we need to survive and to give value to our money by creating things to purchase--are but poor relations to those who don't need to do work that actually makes things because they have so much money they can use that money alone to make more money?
So back in the 1980's we, as a society, moved into the world of living on debt, not just the junk bond debt that is the focus of this work but also personal debt like credit card debt. While we'd had mortgage debt for awhile, it could be taken farther, into equity credit.
The play highlights that, when this break-through began it seemed horrific--companies, with attendant jobs and families and communities dependent on them for decades--were being broken apart for the benefit of shareholders. How could such an horror even be mentally processed by someone born and raised in a steel town, for example?
Yet looking at the situation from the year 2917, which this play allows us to do, we understand that certain companies--given international competition and technological advances--were simply dying and there was nothing anyone could do about it. What the junk bond kings were doing, was simply speeding up that process but not by much. And while speeding up the process benefited themselves it also moved everyone touched by the process more quickly into a future they would eventually have to face anyway.
Also from 2017, we can see that debt does allow people to live now at a higher level than if they had to wait until they could afford everything they wanted to purchase. We saw this back with the first 30 year mortgages for homes, where if a family wanted to pay cash for a house they might have to save for thirty years. And that's only if the house did not go up that much in value over those thirty years. And even if they could buy the house at the end of the thirty years, they would have lost thirty years of life--before getting that house.
And there was a democratization about this. For example, a person with a down payment and a person with the full purchase price could both buy, and then live in, new homes at the same time.
Still there is a fear that arises at the idea of living with debt and an anger with those who have lived well with debt and then avoided paying it off via bankruptcy.
The play moves among these feelings.
Some great lines:
"A man is a funny thing...A man IS what he HAS. That's the truth. Nobody wants to admit it. Everybody wants to say it's something else. Something more noble. But it's not. What a man HAS is what makes him in the eyes of the world, and in his own eyes. (Beat) And the last thing a man wants to feel is that there's another man over there who has what he doesn't..."
This volume includes a great discussion with the author at the end. Some of his thoughts:
I wanted to make the audience "experience the consequences of this thrilling buzz of making money that leaves us all impoverished in some spiritual way."
Does wealth connote celebrity? "It connotes more than that. It's ontology. Wealth is existential, wealth connotes BEING. One doesn't EXIST as a citizen in this advanced, late-captalist moment without wealth. One has no AGENCY without wealth. We exist in the grip of a corporate financial vise that squeezes everybody. I think that the aspect of wealth as a kind of measure of celebrity speaks to the way in which wealth is the only value we aspire to."
"The play is called "Junk" but its' not about junk bonds. The play is about the moment in American history when our relationship to debt changed." How our thoughts/feelings around money changed at a certain moment in our history. "The real innovation of junk bonds...was to create possibility" and allowing more people to sit at the table--or own a house.
The problem is that we've now come to a world where the earning on labor--the work of actually making things--will only be around 2%. In contrast the earnings from capitol--having money invested and earning dividends, benefiting from a stock market rise, getting rents--will be around 5%. This was also Thomas Pinketty's essential message. But what kind of world does that leave us with where the people who are actually making the things we need to survive and to give value to our money by creating things to purchase--are but poor relations to those who don't need to do work that actually makes things because they have so much money they can use that money alone to make more money?
December 29, 2019
In ancient Greece, to be in the know, to get ahead, one had to be proficient in rhetoric. In the Middle Ages, it was theology. At other times, it was agriculture, manufacturing . . . always something, some “it” discipline that rises above the rest and drives the world. In the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, it was and is economics/finance. Unfortunately, though, today’s “it” discipline is distinct from others because it’s so darn specialized and so hard to understand unless one really really studies it, which few do. That’s why so many politicians today, even the so-called progressive darlings, and the members of the media who explains them to the world are, in fact, hopelessly ignorant. It’s also a major weakness in contemporary arts including literature, and why so much of what’s written nowadays seems so trivial compared to classics of earlier generations: Writers typically don’t have the skill sets to address things that matter.
“Junk,” a play about finance, ‘80s style finance in particular led by a transformation in the role of debt capital, is one of the few works that tries to fill this need. “Bonfire of the Vanities” was another; so, too, were Michale Lewis’ “Liar’s Poker” and “The Big Short,” non fiction works that had almost novelistic feels to them.
With respect to “Junk,” author Ayad Akhtar gets it right, all of it and unlike “Bonfire of the Vanities,” he stocks to his core topic and doesn’t veer off into other areas (Bonfire went all in on racial politics). I ran a junk-bond mutual fund in the mid-1980s and recognized 100% of what wads going on in this play and it was often easy for me to plug real-life names in for major fictional characters. And it was a piece of cake for me to fill in lots of details of things that would have happened, conversations that would have been held, etc, in the background between scenes. I mean, Akhtar completely and totally nailed it!
The only thing about which I wonder, and the reason I gave it four stars instead of five, is how it reads to people who aren’t like me, people who didn’t live in and who don’t know this world. As a pay, it was all dialogue (and good, authentic-sounding dialogue at that) and it covers a lot of ground as we shot frequently from one short scene/conversation to another. It held my interest. But I have reservations about how compelling it may be to those who haven’t one way or another (either through having lived it or studied it) come in with a lot of knowledge about this world. I can’t help wishing that Akhtar would recast this as a novel, where he’s have more latitude to bring the uninitiated up to speed. But then again, that would be no easy task. Explaining finance is hard if one wants to keep the reader from falling asleep. I’ve been trying to write a finance novel with a mid-2000s setting so I know how incredibly hard this is (and there’s a really good chance I’ll never get it done). Another Goodreads reviewer suggested a film. That might work; the movie version of “The Big Short” was very well done with narration/education delivered through very snappy entertaining side scenes.
Regardless of what Akhtar chooses to do in the future with this or other aspects of the topic, this work is important for the effort and the substance (and I haven’t been able to hold a candle to what he’s already accomplished). And if it inspires the uninitiated and possibly a bit confused to learn more, so much the better.
“Junk,” a play about finance, ‘80s style finance in particular led by a transformation in the role of debt capital, is one of the few works that tries to fill this need. “Bonfire of the Vanities” was another; so, too, were Michale Lewis’ “Liar’s Poker” and “The Big Short,” non fiction works that had almost novelistic feels to them.
With respect to “Junk,” author Ayad Akhtar gets it right, all of it and unlike “Bonfire of the Vanities,” he stocks to his core topic and doesn’t veer off into other areas (Bonfire went all in on racial politics). I ran a junk-bond mutual fund in the mid-1980s and recognized 100% of what wads going on in this play and it was often easy for me to plug real-life names in for major fictional characters. And it was a piece of cake for me to fill in lots of details of things that would have happened, conversations that would have been held, etc, in the background between scenes. I mean, Akhtar completely and totally nailed it!
The only thing about which I wonder, and the reason I gave it four stars instead of five, is how it reads to people who aren’t like me, people who didn’t live in and who don’t know this world. As a pay, it was all dialogue (and good, authentic-sounding dialogue at that) and it covers a lot of ground as we shot frequently from one short scene/conversation to another. It held my interest. But I have reservations about how compelling it may be to those who haven’t one way or another (either through having lived it or studied it) come in with a lot of knowledge about this world. I can’t help wishing that Akhtar would recast this as a novel, where he’s have more latitude to bring the uninitiated up to speed. But then again, that would be no easy task. Explaining finance is hard if one wants to keep the reader from falling asleep. I’ve been trying to write a finance novel with a mid-2000s setting so I know how incredibly hard this is (and there’s a really good chance I’ll never get it done). Another Goodreads reviewer suggested a film. That might work; the movie version of “The Big Short” was very well done with narration/education delivered through very snappy entertaining side scenes.
Regardless of what Akhtar chooses to do in the future with this or other aspects of the topic, this work is important for the effort and the substance (and I haven’t been able to hold a candle to what he’s already accomplished). And if it inspires the uninitiated and possibly a bit confused to learn more, so much the better.
January 4, 2022
Junk is a slick, intelligent, tense piece of drama that deals with the very relevant and real-world theme of finance and debt. Set in a semi-fictitious 1980s Wall Street world of wheelers and dealers, in the middle of a pending financial coup that could upset the status quo of that high-flying world, it is full of boastful, egotistical, money-obsessed Americans who talk the talk and aim for the top. In short, most of elements of the real world that I find deeply uninteresting and, often, downright repulsive. Junk occurs in short scenes that are, mostly, business meetings or phone calls. As the play progresses and the intrigue builders, business settings turn to police interrogations and investigations. Reading it transports you to the world of American TV, all the usual characters and settings. The structure is familiar as well. It ends, as so many great (and terrible) American stories end with a trial.
Akhtar's challenge is to create newness out of hackneyed themes and settings. He has a head start with because he is writing for the stage which allows him to focus on the heart and soul of such stories - sharp, witty dialogue that is the modern, American equivalent of a duel. These sparring men, exchange blows in an arena built of money and power, is about the most heartless and pathetic of humanities struggles, men replacing old-fashioned violence with new ways of screwing each other over. There's no doubt Akhtar is successful and his characters fit the bill perfectly. However, I was left with only typecasts. Even a week after reading it, I'd struggle to recall the character names or something unique about their personality. Instead they act as symbols of a changing system - Everson the fossilised face of old, fading money; Merkin the ruthless entrepreneur aiming to dismantle the system and reconstruct it in his image; Tressler, the investor who just possibly might have a moral conscience; Chen, the ideological writer and investigator; O' Hare, the unscrupulous but dependent money maker ready to ride any financial wave that crashes into his lap. It's not that the characters are not believable, just perhaps that none of them are surprising.
Certainly, on stage Junk must be intense and exciting, like a season finale of Mad Men or a big blockbuster movie like The Wolf of Wall Street. The play is laced with cynicism and an ambitious attempt to explain notions of debt and investment that are difficult for my brain to understand. The biggest success of the text is the way it presents debt as the opposite of its very definition. It is an effective way of presenting the modern concept of debt in a way that helps you understand how it underpins the entire financial system. It has a doomed feel at the end - the system is too powerful, the amounts of money involved are too great. Other notions - tradition, integrity, truth, justice - are not just ignore, they are impossible to contemplate. Even the fiery Chan is sells out. Akhtar, in that final scene, is asking the audience what their price would be, asking them to question their integrity, daring them to presume to be greater that the unstoppable machine of money that defines our world. Not even money, invisible money, theoretical money, money you don't have. It's a frightening and mind-blowing concept but Akhtar portrays with clarity and skill.
I was very appreciative of his very direct thematical approach, and the entertaining and tense lines of the plot. That doesn't mean it was my thing at all. I didn't like the characters and didn't feel they offered anything new on a human level. For all it's excitement, the plot was unoriginal. The dialogue reinforces my opinion of the character - empty, childlike men who want it all and don't care about anything real. There are plenty of those men in the world (it's important that there are few female characters and that one, Chen, is the only one who faces the audience and offers any kind of personal insight or empathy) and enough TV realities to confirm their existence. To be honest though, I've read (and watched) enough of those men. I don't need to spend any more time in their company.
Akhtar's challenge is to create newness out of hackneyed themes and settings. He has a head start with because he is writing for the stage which allows him to focus on the heart and soul of such stories - sharp, witty dialogue that is the modern, American equivalent of a duel. These sparring men, exchange blows in an arena built of money and power, is about the most heartless and pathetic of humanities struggles, men replacing old-fashioned violence with new ways of screwing each other over. There's no doubt Akhtar is successful and his characters fit the bill perfectly. However, I was left with only typecasts. Even a week after reading it, I'd struggle to recall the character names or something unique about their personality. Instead they act as symbols of a changing system - Everson the fossilised face of old, fading money; Merkin the ruthless entrepreneur aiming to dismantle the system and reconstruct it in his image; Tressler, the investor who just possibly might have a moral conscience; Chen, the ideological writer and investigator; O' Hare, the unscrupulous but dependent money maker ready to ride any financial wave that crashes into his lap. It's not that the characters are not believable, just perhaps that none of them are surprising.
Certainly, on stage Junk must be intense and exciting, like a season finale of Mad Men or a big blockbuster movie like The Wolf of Wall Street. The play is laced with cynicism and an ambitious attempt to explain notions of debt and investment that are difficult for my brain to understand. The biggest success of the text is the way it presents debt as the opposite of its very definition. It is an effective way of presenting the modern concept of debt in a way that helps you understand how it underpins the entire financial system. It has a doomed feel at the end - the system is too powerful, the amounts of money involved are too great. Other notions - tradition, integrity, truth, justice - are not just ignore, they are impossible to contemplate. Even the fiery Chan is sells out. Akhtar, in that final scene, is asking the audience what their price would be, asking them to question their integrity, daring them to presume to be greater that the unstoppable machine of money that defines our world. Not even money, invisible money, theoretical money, money you don't have. It's a frightening and mind-blowing concept but Akhtar portrays with clarity and skill.
I was very appreciative of his very direct thematical approach, and the entertaining and tense lines of the plot. That doesn't mean it was my thing at all. I didn't like the characters and didn't feel they offered anything new on a human level. For all it's excitement, the plot was unoriginal. The dialogue reinforces my opinion of the character - empty, childlike men who want it all and don't care about anything real. There are plenty of those men in the world (it's important that there are few female characters and that one, Chen, is the only one who faces the audience and offers any kind of personal insight or empathy) and enough TV realities to confirm their existence. To be honest though, I've read (and watched) enough of those men. I don't need to spend any more time in their company.
March 1, 2021
This could easily be a movie. But likely got drowned out by all the other wall-street genre movies and tv shows out there.
Fast-paced.
Quick wit.
Loaded with thought-provoking insights into the American economy.
Ends with the clear connection between the America as producer and the transition to America as debt aggregator that may have started with the creation of these "junk" bonds in the 80's and created the housing crises in 2007-2009. Reganomics and deregulations impacts on the general welfare of the larger populace was on display just the other week as Texas was ill-prepared for the cold front that left thousands without power (heat and food) for days and at the same time the energy markets they set up allowed them to gouge people for thousands by claiming there was an "energy surge". It's not a surge if there's no energy available. And the thought that they can just charge people an extra $17,000 for a few days of energy during a natural crisis is just inhumane.
Inhumane greed.
What's that?
Is greed good?
I don't know, but this play did a great job of delving into the early days of America's transition from producer to hedge fund manager.
Fast-paced.
Quick wit.
Loaded with thought-provoking insights into the American economy.
Ends with the clear connection between the America as producer and the transition to America as debt aggregator that may have started with the creation of these "junk" bonds in the 80's and created the housing crises in 2007-2009. Reganomics and deregulations impacts on the general welfare of the larger populace was on display just the other week as Texas was ill-prepared for the cold front that left thousands without power (heat and food) for days and at the same time the energy markets they set up allowed them to gouge people for thousands by claiming there was an "energy surge". It's not a surge if there's no energy available. And the thought that they can just charge people an extra $17,000 for a few days of energy during a natural crisis is just inhumane.
Inhumane greed.
What's that?
Is greed good?
I don't know, but this play did a great job of delving into the early days of America's transition from producer to hedge fund manager.
January 28, 2024
This is my least favorite of Akhtar's plays I've read, but that didn't mean it lacked the biting social commentary and grand gestures of those two works. Junk is Akhtar's most ambitious play to date. There are a lot of moving parts and characters, plus there are some subplots that could leave readers feeling unsatisfied. I did like how we were able to get clear pictures of the main players and how debt has played a collective role in American life for better and for worse. Robert Merkin was a compelling antihero who was able to draw my sympathy despite being an iffy person. He may not have changed, bur I did understand his conviction and enjoyed the scenes with his wife, who Akhtar empowers just as much.
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March 3, 2025Ayad Akhtar's writing occupies so much of my mind. He is an incredible explorer of how money, power, wealth, and the attempt to obtain all three of these intersects with identity in America.
As he comments after the play, "capital takes a top heavy quality; everything is transformed into a process of finance, usurped by this need for five percent. We no longer ,ale cars to make cars, we make cars to create debt that yield five percent. Ww no longer sell food to sell food, we sell food because credit cards are used to buy the food, and the credit card debt yields five percent. Nothing makes money the way money makes money...we are arguing about what color our skin is, and in the process, the entire world has been sold out from under us."
As he comments after the play, "capital takes a top heavy quality; everything is transformed into a process of finance, usurped by this need for five percent. We no longer ,ale cars to make cars, we make cars to create debt that yield five percent. Ww no longer sell food to sell food, we sell food because credit cards are used to buy the food, and the credit card debt yields five percent. Nothing makes money the way money makes money...we are arguing about what color our skin is, and in the process, the entire world has been sold out from under us."
November 25, 2021
Probably this is well-written and would translate a little better on stage. I just didn't understand what most of the characters were talking about (which was a me problem)and found most of them had more or less the same voice. Felt more plot/thriller than character, though Akhtar does a great job of displaying the wide array of moral conundrum and noble/ignoble motivations. His characters are mostly all convinced they're doing good while their adversaries are committing some American evil, and this play turns into a tragedy because none of them are willing to change, for better or for worse, or see the error of their ways.
January 22, 2018
A quick, breezy read that feels more like a blockbuster film than a play. Not too hard to understand if you (like me) know only the basics about credit card debt and junk bonds.
Ultimately about how our debts- literal, figurative, personal, national - will come for us one way or another. The author never falls on one side of the debate, leaving us to decide who the heroes and villains in this play are.
Ultimately about how our debts- literal, figurative, personal, national - will come for us one way or another. The author never falls on one side of the debate, leaving us to decide who the heroes and villains in this play are.
January 24, 2018
As unbelievable as it sounds, this play about economic policy and junk bonds was interesting AND dramatic, I would love to see a production of it. The entire "debt is an asset" which is a concept that still boggles my mind and the political aspects..... This is equivalent in my mind of the modern Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.... in impact, implications, drama, gut reaction.
Worthy of you reading time.
Worthy of you reading time.
February 17, 2018
Just thinking about how the 1980s was really almost 40 years ago, kind of blows my mind. This book kinda like the working/ paperwork side of the wolf of wall street. With quirky characters this play is set in another time, but definitely applies to today's economic / capitalist society. A view of how the almighty dollar truly does rule the world.
January 18, 2018
I find it a bit difficult to read a play and get the full impact. I hope there will be a nearby production.
The subject matter isn't for everyone and I got a bit bogged down at times. However anyone who is interested in the world of finance and how we got to where we are now will enjoy it.
The subject matter isn't for everyone and I got a bit bogged down at times. However anyone who is interested in the world of finance and how we got to where we are now will enjoy it.
July 22, 2018
Fabulous play that handles immense complexity with remarkable ease. The author avoids cheap easy moralizing. No one is innocent, people vary in their level of complicity and awareness.
A great achievement.
A great achievement.
December 4, 2021
I "read" this play which is a "fictionalized performance based on true events" by watching the University of Michigan students perform it on stage. It is an outstanding example of the effect of greed on people.
January 24, 2018
It's like Wolf On Wall Street, minus the Quaaludes, which make the former the fun read it is.
July 2, 2018
Promising financial thriller that ran into third act problems
August 27, 2018
I think this play would be better as a screenplay.
October 16, 2018
Cast full of hateful characters. What a crappy world finance is.
March 22, 2019
Important and entertaining, but definitely meant more for seeing on stage than for reading.
November 12, 2019
Not my favorite, but that's only because I don't really like plays or the stock market lol
October 11, 2020
It's just a mis mosh of Wall Street the movies and other people money (also a movie). The author wants to explain what finance is doing and has done; this book is misleading.
February 19, 2021
Moves with a nice tempo and I’m interested in all of the character threads but it never quite gels for me.
May 28, 2021
Terrific, fast-paced, human. All too relevant, even with it's 1980s setting (I see why Ayad Akhtar made that choice).
June 25, 2021
Very 80s, felt like something out of succession with all the rich people backstabbing
December 23, 2021
Loved it. It felt like The Big Short prequel as a play.
November 1, 2022
i have quibbles about the play's cynicism, about its treatment of chen as a character, and about the on-the-nose ending, but ultimately i gotta give it up.
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