Review: JUNK at Burbage Theater Co.

Watching Ayad Akhtar's Junk in 2022, it's hard not to hear echoes of our own current political climate - filled with false convictions brandished as fact - when one of its main characters asks, in exasperation, to a room of people refusing to listen, "What do these people even mean when they speak anymore?"

Junk was first produced in 2016, when many Americans were first learning the awful power of one of our country's most enduring myths - that the game isn't rigged if you're clever enough to outplay the riggers. But Junk gives an incisive, merciless look at an earlier such moment in our recent history - the rise of the high-yield (or "junk") bond market in the 1980s. Sellers claimed these debt-dependent bonds would wrest the market from old, white wealth. In reality, these unstable investments created an increasingly volatile market - one that lined the pockets of the 1%, while poor and middle-class people bore the brunt of its downturns. In Burbage Theater Company's arresting production, a terrifically directed ensemble brings this tension between high-minded philosophy and corrupted practice to crackling life.

The man responsible for this whirlwind is Robert Merkin (Anthony Goes), a fictional investment firm hotshot who claims high-risk bonds will decentralize old wealth, making the American get-rich-quick dream attainable for all. Merkin speaks like an evangelist for capitalism's new age: the debt-heavy investments he's shepherding may cause bedrock industries to collapse, but "some things have to die in order for others to be born." But even as he praises this new religion, he indulges in criminal behavior that erodes his moral ground and leaves him vulnerable to the forces and men who wish to take him down.

Merkin may be the wizard that orchestrates this chaos, but there are no heroes in Junk. By the play's end, its dozens of characters have each been ethically compromised by their involvement in Merkin's market. Some profit handsomely, some fall tragically, but no one's hands are clean.

It speaks to this production's superlative ensemble that these characters are so unlikeable and yet utterly engrossing. As Merkin, Goes is both charismatic and chilling - he's thoroughly believable as a man whose godly delusions make him power's mere thrall. Other standouts include Allison Crews as Merkin's wife - a true believer with a shrewd financial mind and a big blindspot where her husband's dealings are concerned - Andrew Stigler as traditionalist investor and raging xenophobe Leo Tresler, and Darby Wilson as Judy Chen, an intrepid investigative reporter who commits a single, insurmountable ethical lapse.

Its sheer number of characters, scenes, and heady plot points could bury Junk under its own weight. But director Jeff Church thrives with this kind of busy, smart material, making what could be chaos instead feel like an intricately choreographed dance. Junk is staged in the round, with characters entering from multiple points around the theater, often appearing before the previous scene has ended. (The night I attended, multiple scenes took place an arm's length from my seat.) The boardroom table and chairs at the center of the stage depict close to a dozen locations over the course of the play - nearly all populated by power-suited characters in stark whites and grays. The visual indistinction between scenes - and between stage and audience - creates an effect that is both sharp and swirling, mirroring the dizzying volatility of the market itself. Like the many characters that fill the world of Junk, the audience, too, is caught in the maelstrom of the junk bond market that mere men, like Merkin, created.

Burbage Theatre Co's Junk runs through September 11th at 59 Blackstone Avenue, Pawtucket, RI. Tickets are $30 (general admission) and $15 (students).

Tickets are available online at www.burbagetheatre.org. For more information, call 401-484-0355 or email boxoffice@burbagetheatre.org.

Photos by Maggie Hall Photography.

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