Just because a subject has been tackled before does not mean that it's not worth dealing with again. It only seems old hat if tackled badly. I'm afraid Burleigh Grimes, now on at the Bridewell Theatre, off Fleet Street, has that problem. Playwrights like Caryl Churchill in the play Serious Money portrayed financial skullduggery in the City with ebullience, wit and pungency, and since unfortunately the topic is just as germane in the new century, there is good reason for a new look at it. But Roger Kirby's play is too schematic and superficial, too much of an obvious morality tale, to be interesting. 
     The characters are just goodies and baddies, with the goodies becoming baddies by the end of the play. But it is unclear why they change. We are never privy to their motivations, or to the reasons they abandon principle, or to how the baddies can live without it. Presumably the eponymous anti-hero (played by John Guerrasio) is supposed to be larger than life, but, largely because of what he has to say, he isn't; nor does he ever seem other than a pasteboard villain. The only mitigating factor, and it is a very predictable one, is that he has achieved success by struggling out of hardship through his formidable intelligence (not much in evidence). A lot is made of the grudge he understandably holds against 'old money', and for the way in which those with inherited wealth feel able to condemn their own sort of behaviour in the self-made, and to get away with vulgar corruption themselves while cloaked in respectability. But nothing is added to this old theme.
      Nor is there anything illuminating in the portrayal of Betty Bigley (Kristin Milward), the inevitable stock even-worse-than-the-male woman, standardly middle-aged, attractive, sexually and financially predatory. It is unclear whether she did or did not have a passion for Burleigh Grimes, nor is there any sense of connection between them. Grimes's wife is merely a caricature, and this the script's fault more than the actor's (Sally Pressman). The contempt and indifference for her own child, which she continually voices, is absurdly unbelievable.
      There is a lot of verve and energy in the production, and the actors do their best with their material, especially in the first half, but it's an uphill struggle, even on the expensive-looking smooth glass chess-board set.
Jane O'Grady