With most of our 401(k)s and stock portfolios hemorrhaging money and the economy apparently heading for a recession, you might think that Sarah Burgess’s dark-toned Dry Powder, a financial comedy, was written yesterday instead of 2016.
Set mainly in the upscale offices of a New York capital management firm, amid the jargon-spewing and back-stabbing of its rival wheeler-dealers, the play contain as unlikeable a group of characters as you may ever encounter. If you already suspect that these folks are venal and greedy, you could probably pass on seeing Dry Powder, for that is the prime message of its 90 intermissionless minutes.
In the Boca Stage production, directed with powder-dry humor by Genie Croft, we first meet Rick (Wayne LeGette), the fat cat founder and president of KMM Capital Management, who is having a really bad day. After throwing himself an excessive $1 million engagement party at the same time that he forced huge layoffs at a supermarket chain he recently acquired, the press got wind of the shindig — which featured a live elephant, maybe two — and now his investors are drying up…