Love and Money

David, a former English literature professor who became a salesman to earn more money. Jess, who suffers a nervous breakdown due to her addiction to overconsumption. A marriage collapsing under the weight of debt and a relationship leading to extinction with tragic consequences.

Two parents, whose mourning for their daughter and realization of the commercialization of death leads them to vandalism. A successful manager who has replaced her faith in God with the acceptance of the value of the wondrous world of money. Finally, Sandrine, an executive in a multinational company, who at the beginning of a love story discovers a horrible secret.

The events do not unfold linearly but follow an apparently "random" sequence. However, this chronological inconsistency, aptly given by the author, highlights the characters and their choices in an exceptional way, bringing out the thematic core.

A play about human relationships being destroyed by money, consumerism, and debts. All the dramatic characters tear each other apart until their final fall, swimming in bags of branded clothes, packages of ready-made foods, luxury cars, alcohol, tranquilizers, and credit cards. The text refers to modern life, social cannibalism, and the disappearance of the individual within the stereotypes of television and the internet. Debts, shopping, suicide, online flirting, professional ambition, are some of the elements that compose the world of this tragic farce.

Dennis Kelly depicts with a caustic and poetic style the relentless pace of modern life in the western world and composes an oratorio about how we constantly stray from the path of love even though we have a vital need to love and be loved.

At a time when the historical conjuncture: climate catastrophe, pandemic, and war in Europe compel us to look in the mirror and reflect, this play appears as a reminder of what went wrong, as sarcasm against vanity, greed, overconsumption, and gluttony. The reverse chronological order, the flashback of events, perhaps also highlights the possibility of changing history. Each story's history.

The play "Love and Money" by Dennis Kelly was first presented in 2006 at the Royal Exchange (Manchester) before moving to the Young Vic Maria (London) directed by Matthew Dunster. The performance was nominated in 2007 for the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre.