Jordan Belfort's drug-fueled financial crime memoir, memorably filmed by Martin Scorsese, arrives in London as an immersive theatrical orgy of excess.
Notorious for its sex-and-drugs party culture, Belfort's Long Island brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont was shut down in 1996 after a series of "pump and dump" scams boosting the price of low-value stock to unsuspecting investors. Belfort eventually cut a deal to co-operate with the FBI, served a modest jail term for securities fraud and money laundering, then smartly reinvented himself as an author and motivational speaker.
Staging a cautionary parable about financial skulduggery in the heart of London's banking district could be read as an audacious, caustic commentary on the economic crash-and-burn of the past decade and the current political climate of hollow Trump-ian braggadocio. But any such high-minded intentions are quickly lost in a production that foregrounds boorish, bullying, profanity-laced, orgiastic excess above all else. This is a play with plenty of shouting, but not much to say.
More of a promenade production than a truly immersive experience, Wright's broad-brush treatment mostly misfires due to its diffuse approach to plot, splitting audiences off into separate groups who are then scattered to far corners of the labyrinthine location.