Masters of the Universe

Dry Powder at the Public Theater

(L-R): Claire Danes, John Krasinski, and Hank Azaria in Dry Powder.

    Not since Glengarry Glen Ross has such as collection of eloquent slime been assembled upon a stage as in Dry Powder, the new play by Sarah Burgess and directed by Tommy Kail at the Public through May 1st.  Like that play, it’s appealing not for its sporadic cruel humor or for its pathos as much as its effortless fluency in the language of the profession it variously celebrates and views through a skeptical eye.  In the case of David Mamet’s 1984 play, it was real estate sales; for Ms. Burgess, it’s private equity.
    The latter playwright achieves a similar feat to the former in making the obscure language of a demonized line of work seem poetic and clear without ever oversimplifying it.  Ms. Burgess, like Mr. Mamet, also raises the stakes beyond the everyday, making immediate the struggles of a class of people with whom the theatergoing public might struggle to identify.  Rick, an impatient collection of tics and bellows played excellently by the wonderful character actor Hank Azaria, is the founder and president of a beleaguered private equity firm called KMM, which has run into trouble as of late after Rick threw himself an elaborate birthday party (which he insists included no more than one elephant) on the same day as KMM laid off thousands of workers at a national supermarket chain they own.  The resulting PR nightmare -- which seems to be brewing financial trouble for Rick as well -- can only be abated by a huge deal.  Luckily, Seth (John Krasinski), a co-founder of the firm and one of Rick’s right-hand men, has one: the acquisition of an American-made luggage company run by a seemingly gullible CEO, Jeff (Sanjit de Silva).  Jeff is willing to sell for a song, but the third co-founder, Jenny (Claire Danes), refuses to consider any deal, however good it’d look, that doesn't maximize potential profit.  Betrayal and backroom deals ensue.
    The cast is excellent and thrillingly naturalistic, but, appropriately for a play about high finance, the day is stolen by an unexpected participant.  Claire Danes’ character is a cartoon -- she refers to Yale as a “second-tier Ivy” and appears genuinely dumbstruck when Jeff tells her about his company-wide volunteering initiative -- and she’s not the right actress, overrated as she is, to elevate her to anything more than a generally funny foil.  It’s John Krasinski, unsurprisingly for me but perhaps surprisingly to the general public, who walks away with the production.  He has a towering dignity as an actor that he could never quite hide under his mean-spirited prankster on “The Office,” and he handles Seth’s transformation from smarmy sleaze to the moral center of the play, one of the most satisfying arcs in recent drama, with the same reserved, relaxed aplomb with which he fires off insults at his rival, Jenny.  It’s his first Off-Broadway performance, but almost certainly not his last.
    The play itself -- staged in the round by Mr. Kail, director of Hamilton, in a sea of nonspecific blue plastic fitting for a play about removed industrialism -- is not so much ripped from the headlines as much as it makes the audience vaguely uncomfortable when referencing subjects that are becoming more and more relevant (carried interest comes to mind).  The bespoke suits and unfortunate pantsuits (designed by Clint Ramos) and pulsing electronic music (by Lindsay Jones) seem to suggest that not all that much has changed in this world since the days of the yuppie, amoral businessmen who inspired American Psycho.  And much as those amoral businessmen would, it actually succeeds in raising the suspicion that doing what’s “right” may not always be the best choice, not only financially but also morally.  This means Ms. Burgess, in her third play, has created something ethically ambiguous, laugh-out-loud funny, and disturbingly relevant -- words one could easily use to describe the looming presence of the very system it depicts.