A sharp and immediate response to Glasgow's elected officials' apparent familiarity with certain businessmen, Greed has the qualities of a scratch performance: raw, under-rehearsed and precocious. While none of the cast will be winning awards for their acting, the timeliness of the message and savage rhetoric of the script make this a strong argument for directly political theatre.
The director may have been careful to avoid labeling each character with their real life inspiration, but the moral is clear: elected official are corrupted by their power, and easily manipulated by the wealthy when they pose as philanthropists. The villain is almost pantomime obvious - the use of a fat suit and the iconic stove-pipe hat puts him firmly in the tradition of Soviet propaganda drama - all schemes and soliloquies. His victims, a chorus of sweet children who hope that their school will be upgraded, are equally stereotypical. The only depth is in the Councillors, all male, who are both deceived and willingly deceive. A more rounded treatment might have found a tragic depth in their predicament.
But this is not author Margaret Kirk's intention: she wades through the sleaze of modern politics, hammering home the easy points and evoking a powerful sense of outrage. As the final lines, given to the chorus and addressed to the audience, explain: "Imagine if this was not just on the stage, but happened in life... Oh, I am sorry, it did.
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