Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 239
They’ll provide you with a guaranteed pure,
donated by a churchgoer, bottle of pee.
(They also plan to market it dehydrated in a packet
and you just add water.)
And AIDS is making advertisers perplexed
Because it’s no longer too good to have your product
associated with sex.
But it’s a great marketing opportunity.
Like the guys opening up blood banks where you
pay to store your own blood in case of an
accident and so be guaranteed immunity.
(It’s also a great time to buy into rubber.)
Anyone who can buy oranges for ten and sell at
eleven in a souk or bazaar
Has the same human nature and can go equally far.
The so-called third world doesn’t want our charity
or aid.
All they need is the chance to sit down in front of
some green screens and trade.
The witty rhymes, punctuated by parenthetical “ad libs,”
and the complicated frenzy of Serious Money’s plot and
staging (much of the play takes place on a stock brokerage’s
trading floor, bursting with stock monitors, telephone
banks, and continuous, shouted deal-making) create a mesmerizing
enchantment. Yet Churchill’s views of economic
exploitation on an international level beam through loud and
clear. Satire is a topical dramatic form that often does not
outlive its topics, but when the content is compelling and
the form brilliant—as it was with Aristophanes and is with
Churchill—the play usually survives its merely political utility
and makes its way into the lasting theatrical repertoire.