Other People’s Money

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Wall Street vs. Mom and Pop.

Greed vs. Caring.

Pompous vs. Gentile.

Many years ago a colleague chastised me for shopping at Safeway instead of a Mom & Pop store, which for religious reasons closed on Sunday. Because of the insane schedule, the Mom & Pop store didn’t fit my profile. That was no excuse as far as my colleague was concerned. The Mom & Pop people were close friends of his. He was on a campaign to ensure Safeway and all the other chain stores would have to close on Sunday. He gritted his teeth when I wouldn’t sign his petition. My colleague was 30 years behind the times in more ways than one, taking the bitter reality of big business overtaking the small, and that was nearly 40 years ago. Strangely enough that Mom & Pop store is still in business. Obviously, they know something about survival.

Something Andrew Jorgenson (Michael Balch) never learned in Jerry Sterner’s play Other People’s Money now playing at the Denver Victorian Playhouse with as much sensual power as any other play in the Metro area.

Jorge’s father started the Rhode Land entrenched New England Wire and Cable Company. The office furniture needs updating, the walls need painting, but Jorge runs the company for the stockholders. He has a responsibility to the community for which the company provides jobs. He doesn’t concern himself with the fact his company will soon be obsolete with the development of new technology called fiber optics. That never occurs to him.

When a Wall Street tycoon, announces he will be paying a visit, Jorge and his Manager, William Coles (Michael Grittner) speculate on the how’s and why’s. It could only be good news, Jorge speculates. Bill, on the other hand remains skeptical.

Neither one is quite prepared for the donut eating tornado whirling into the office from a black stretch limousine.

Cocky, arrogant, commanding attention and donuts, he sends Bea Sullivan (Karen Kargel) to get Dunkin’ Donuts. Aside from the fact this small New England town doesn’t have a Dunkin’ Donuts only sets Lawrence Garfinkle (Wade Wood) back slightly. He orders her to have his limo driver take her to get some. Aside from being money hungry, Garfinkle is so hung up on donuts that when Intermission happens, the audience asks, “Where are the donuts?”

Known as Larry the Liquidator, Lawrence oozes arrogance, greed, ruthlessness, self-centeredness with bright eyes, a perpetually stunning smile, and charm. Wood engulfs this bigger than life character filling his shoes as well as his puffed-up pride. Wade gives an amazing performance. In spite of the integrated action going with around him, it is difficult to keep the eyes off of Larry. The perpetual motion in his expression, the determination ginning through his eyes demands attention. Wade entrenched in Larry knocks the socks off, handing them back neatly folded.

The play takes place in 1987. Winner of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play in 1989, it can be said that the play suffers from dated material. Maybe. Maybe not. In 1989 sympathy may have sided with Jorge, but now with a toehold in the 21st Century, Larry the Liquidator makes more and more sense. Besides the character Woods so carefully constructed with cocky shoulders, commanding walk, and arrogant brow, one can’t help but like him.

Balch’s characterization paints a complex portrait of a man desperately wanting to continue a tradition, burdened under the caring for the people of the town, fearing failure, but has not taken the time to study the world market.

Kargel wears subdued motherly attire as Jorge’s loyal trustworthy naive assistant and wife, Bea. She runs his company as closely as a sheep dog works for his shepherd. Having carried on a 37-year love affair with Jorge, she carries his burden under high anxiety.

Larry’s ticket to wealth comes with his searching out company’s standing on their last legs that are worth more dead than alive. He buys their stock jumping in for the takeover.

In desperation Bea turns to her sharp energetic lawyer daughter, Kate beautifully played by Lisa Rosenhagen. Kate harbors ill feeling toward her mother for the disloyalty Bea treated her husband and Kate’s father over the connection between Bea and Jorge. In her strategic lawyer-thinking demeanor, the thrill of the game coming up against Larry wins out over her poignant ill feelings.

The confrontations between Larry and Kate are extraordinarily well written and exceptionally executed. Everything is a game to Larry, even sexual exploitation, and he takes every opportunity he can to melt Kate’s ice machine. Donuts even work for him.

Serving as narrator, Bill recounts the events that happened two years before. He takes his clues from Jorge. He learns his lessons well by keeping them under wraps. By playing down his character, Grittner is indeed someone to watch. He has neatly inserted a high sense of loyalty to Jorge and the company, but he’s sharp enough to know which side of the bread is buttered. Even when he fights with Jorge for the company, Bill’s brain is working overtime. Grittner shows a unique manner for Bill to walk a fine line. He’s going to make a move, and when he does he’s slick. He’s learned how to play with The Donut Man.

Sarah Rosen designed the set filling the space attractively to fit nicely into Rhode Island and New York. With the applicable lighting design by Karalyn Pytel, the Victorian stage works nicely for the actors to move quickly and easily and believably from one place to another.

Directed by Janet DeRuvo, Other People’s Money with defining movement, crisp exchanges, and humorous lines become intentional pieces of conversations. Never once do the actors rely on the funny of the lines. They make them their own. These actors own their characters.

Sterner died in New York in 2001. After making his mark in Real Estate, he turned to his first love: writing plays. It has been said of him he either was a successful businessman disguised as a playwright or a successful playwright camouflaged as a businessman. It is clear he wrote about what he knew, which is, after all what makes an exceptional playwright. He knew how to get inside of his characters, and this cast holds the key to the expertise to take the words of the printed page bringing the characters to conflicting complicated life.

As the games accelerate and strategy heats up, everything comes to a head at a Stockholder’s meeting. Jorgenson gives his best shot, which is rather impressive holding all the classic community minded arguments in the palm of his hand and the quaver of his voice and deep furors of his brow. It is Larry with his crackerjack aim, the Amen’s, the death prayer, and the stark realities that widen the eyes. This slick boisterous tycoon has done this before, and will do it again. He knows precisely where and how to tie emotions, fact, and truth together.

Wade is so powerful in this last speech, there is the wanting to order donuts and vote.

Bill ties up the loose ends with the story. In many ways this is the weakest part of the play, the loose ends. Although, and fun and delightful to see, the romantic horseplay between Kate and Larry turn into a kindled love story, nothing can match the drama of the Stockholder’s meeting where the points become crystal clear. After Larry’s speech the play is over.

Other People’s Money made be dated, but this exquisite production deserves attention. A powerful piece of worked laced with digging humor; it teases the imagination with intriguing food for thought that go above and beyond the wanting of donuts.