Serious Money

Serious Money is perhaps Caryl Churchill's most provocative play. It is a satirical study of the effects of the "Big Bang" boom of financial markets in the 1980s and how it gave rise to hectic, chaotic, high-velocity work where human values are compromised for success and wealth.

The dialogue of the play is largely overlapping with ingenious rhyming couplets and singsong verse. It is so stylized that Churchill even includes a rhymed soliloquy and a rap number. Language in the play is coarse, with a particular emphasis on scatological humour, and the tone is overwhelmingly angry. Churchill's characters are drawn as razor-sharp, cartoonish caricatures. The plot revolves around financial wheeler-dealers born into the boom who want to maximize profits above all else. The tone is contemporary, edgy, witty, and some have viewed it as massively offensive: it is a hard-hitting work.

This student edition contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work, an introduction providing background to the play, a discussion of interpretations, and notes on individual words and phrases in the text.