Caryl Churchill’s “Serious Money” is a scorching satire of the financial elite of both British and North American society, one that is both provocative and pessimistic. The play’s first scene is borrowed from a seventeenth-century play by Thomas Shadwell, The Volunteers, in which the essential problem at the heart of high finance, namely how ethics takea backseat to profit, is emphasized. Churchill’s inclusion of such a scene has the double purpose of showing how financial immorality is as old as the modern world and of implying that it is therefore unlikely to change in the future.

In the subsequent scene, the vigorous pace that characterizes both the play and the financial market it represents is set. The scene details three separate settings. In the first of these, Greville is talking with an investor on the phone, describing a potential investment and predicting its likely profitability. In a second room, Grimes and Scilla, two female traders, monitor stock prices. They also discuss hedonistic things, such as going out after work. In the third room, Scilla’s brother Jake sits with several traders hurriedly trying to hammer out the terms of a deal before an anticipated power cut. When this power cut happens, the group are horrified.

In the next scene, Jake, Scilla, and Limes are discussing how much money they are earning in an expensive-seeming bar. Jake announces his ambition to retire at thirty but admits this may involve his having to fight dirty. He asks Scilla to take care of Zac, an American businessman whom Jake has invited to visit but whom he cannot host since he will be out of the town on the weekend. Zac comes in and tells the three about two businessmen, Merrison and Durkfeld, who worked together for a number of years before one turned on the other and drove them out of the business so as to make more profits for themselves. For Zac, trading, and not banking, is where the real money is now.

The next scene sees the characters already introduced, plus two or three more riding horses in the country. The dialog has a musical quality, with repeated phrases perhaps mirroring the cyclicalnature of finance in the city of London. The scene’s chief revelation is delivered by Frosby, who warns that he intends to bring misfortune on Scilla and Jake. This at least comes true for Jake, who is dead before the start of the next scene. Though the audience doesn’t see his demise, they are made aware of it by Zac, who informs his friend Marylou Baines, who in turn initiates a string of phone calls passing the news throughout the financial community. Scilla is shown identifying Jake’s body at the hospital and complaining that he was murdered. She announces that she will question everyone he wrote about in his diary so as to find out who it was that killed him. This scene also reveals that at the time of his death, Jake was under investigation by the British government for illegal financial practices.

Scilla pays her father a visit and demands he tell her all he knew of Jake’s dealings and whether or not he thought anyone would have a motive for disposing of him. Greville claims to know nothing. The scene then switches again to a conversation between Zac and Corman, who are planning to buy out a company and sell it off so as to make more money. Ducket, who owns this company, seeks the help of Ms. Biddulph, who promises him she will make a deal with Corman to guarantee Ducket’s continued employment. Corman...