Boys Will Be Boys - Sydney Theatre Co

Overview

Rarely have I been given reason to reassess my opinion of Gordon Gekko, the ruthless stockbroker of Oliver Stone’s 1987 film, Wall Street. Rarer still has been the opportunity to consider his philosophy of rampant acquisition to the detriment of all else as anything approaching moderate. Melissa Bubnic’s Boys Will Be Boys, directed by Paige Rattray for Sydney Theatre Company, gave me both of these things. The play’s setting is a currency trading firm where the smiles are fake, the money is real and any part of your back that isn’t impervious to daggers probably needs your attention. Attempts to picture Gekko in this office conjured only various images of Michael Douglas’s head on a stick. This play is fast and mean and left me the bewilderment of the recently scammed.

Priya (Sophia Roberts), a young businesswoman, is looking to become involved in finance. She talks the talk, but Astrid (Danielle Cormack), her mentor and an old hand at the currency trading game, recognises a dangerous naivete sitting alongside Priya’s potential. As she learns the ropes and cuts a few throats, Priya, like so many before her, realises that her material gains are unlikely to offset the staggering losses she is experiencing in the markets of morality and self-respect.

At the same time, Astrid is negotiating a complicated relationship with a prostitute, Isabelle (Meredith Penman). Their deepening connection prompts many a conversation comparing their chosen professions and the pragmatic and fickle nature of both. A portrait of their boss, Arthur (an insanely charismatic Tina Bursill), looking the spitting image of David Bowie, coolly surveils the office as the real McCoy stalks in and out intermittently.

David Fleischer has done an excellent job designing the office; fluorescent lights and cheap ceiling panels are offset by the stylish layout of the room, which has a professionally spartan quality to it (think corporate Zen garden).

The cast is all female, though the characters are not. While Rattray has suggested that we are seeing "despicable women acting like men", there is very little of the adolescent machismo that tends to permeate similar male-dominated narratives here. Instead, there is an unrelenting, if not always overt savagery, focussed by pointed humour that refuses to dissipate the tension. "I remember you before Botox, that’s how old I am," and other zingers ricochet around the space, threatening to start small blazes where they land.

Breaking up the office politics are Astrid’s occasional forays into cabaret, which are really a series of snide, irony-laden commentaries on society’s (mis)perception of the modern woman. Her broad accusations of female stereotyping are driven home by the rest of the cast, who during these intervals, shed complex characters to become flouncing, leotard-clad chorus girls.

Boys Will Be Boys is fantastic — a tight and merciless show. Give these people your money; they know how to get the most out of it.

Images by Brett Boardman.