Ayad Akhtar put his finger on the beating pulse of corporate America, and Junk: The Golden Age of Debt is what appeared on the electrocardiogram. Quick-witted and brimming with exclusive business jargon, Junk is an incredibly relevant and parabolic story painting a picture of greed in America. While I do believe there could be improvements with the execution of the language, I was absolutely enthralled by this piece, on the edge of my seat from start to finish. I was equally disgusted and fascinated by the brains of these businessmen and how disposable loyalty truly was. This cesspool of festering and hemorrhaging avarice was as horrific as it was captivating; there was just something so gluttonous about the entire affair. I am not typically one to enjoy dramas related to financial topics, but Junk grabbed me by the suit collar and did not let go until the very last line.

Junk: The Golden Age of Debt is a 2016 theatrical depiction of the incessant greed rampant in America as the rich insatiably claw their way to a dollar amount with which they will never be satisfied. Set in 1980s Wall Street, this high-stakes and sharp-tongued corporate drama details the moral ambiguity exercised behind the closed doors of business meetings and displays the terrifying implementation of a debt-fueled society. Robert Merkin, the charismatic cynosure of the play, attempts to weaponize–or, as he sees it, revolutionize–junk bonds to buy out Everson Steel. In his greed, he becomes entangled in a sprawling affair of less-than-legal temptations as he attempts to successfully acquire the company for Izzy Peterson, the prospective Chief Executive of Everson Steel and United (ESU). Tom Everson, current Chief Executive of ESU, is desperate to keep his family’s business and employs every possible tactic to ward off Merkin and his team of sharks. From poison pills designed to manipulate stock prices to genuine pleading, Everson adamantly refuses to relinquish his grandfather’s company to the power-hungry Robert Merkin. With two ambitious attorneys on the fin of the “White Whale” (a.k.a. Merkin) and eager journalists on the cusp of a story bigger than they could imagine, playwright Ayad Akhtar, in argot and acerbic prose, explores the flagrant corruption in our capitalistic society and vividly depicts a world of expendable values at the cost of riches.

Morality aside, which nearly summarizes the core of the play, the piece follows Bob Merkin as he attempts to close this deal, making him the protagonist. Charismatic and tactful, Merkin is the strategic financier of the Everson Steel deal. He, in his arrogant and voracious endeavor, believes that junk bonds are the key to financial accretion and liberation. Operating under the ideology that “debt is an asset,” Merkins repeatedly expresses his love for taking on or enforcing massive amounts of debt to incur a large reward in the return for the risk. He makes several bold statements that diverge from what the typical American thinks when they hear “debt.” Merkins asserts that “debt forces discipline. Clear decision making,” and that it “signifies new beginnings.” He genuinely believes that using junk bonds to generate debt is the path to paving a better America. What he is unable to recognize–and what the play fails to more accessibly describe–is that these junk bonds have a vast margin for failure; the payoff, if any, is rarely worth the risk.

It seems heartless to refer to Tom Everson as the play’s primary antagonist, but, seeing as he is actively standing in Merkin’s way, it is an accurate classification; this, in my opinion, is a massive strength of the piece on Aykhtar’s part as it draws a direct parallel to the corruption of capitalistic America, further glorifying the money-hungry and villainizing those who hold different values in business. He directly contrasts Merkin’s claims that “debt is an asset,” as he believed, and outwardly said, “Debt like that will kill [his] company.” Everson, while he is not the most apt businessman, especially in comparison to his father, truly cares about his business and his employees. His sentimentality, both his strength and undoing, is something strikingly uncommon in the world of business. Uninterested in the flowery deals and promises Merkin and his team had to make, Everson sees more than just a business or money when he looks at Everson Steel; he outright exclaims that they are “not just some number on the exchange that makes people happy when it ticks up, and when it doesn’t, makes them fuck with our lives.” This business is just as much a part of him as his father was, and when it is taken from him, he goes with it.

I find the primary strength and weakness of the play to be one and the same: the language. I partially enjoy and appreciate the heavy amount of business jargon incorporated throughout the piece. The language adds credibility to the content and makes the entire deal feel far more real. I feel isolated, which I think is exactly the point. I feel as though a major goal of this play is to isolate the readers, separating us from the rich moneybags who are entangled in this web of dollar signs. The play outright mentions the importance of language several times, with the first being the opening as Merkin, Peterson, and Rivera (Merkin’s lawyer) discuss the importance of phrasing in what is, ultimately, a lesson in how to manipulate the general public, and the last being the closing of the play as Merkin sits in prison; he states, “That’s how they get you. It’s how they get everyone. The system’s speaking a different language, a language they know people don’t understand. The second anyone tries to explain it, their eyes glaze over. That’s by design. They make fools out of everyone.” The language was crafted for a very particular reason, and I think, for the most part, it accomplishes what it set out to do. That being said, there comes a point where the average reader will lose essential details of the story because they are simply not equipped with the vocabulary to understand fully. Merkin hit the nail on his head when he said “their eyes glaze over” because mine did at several points. The play moves fast, and the language is unforgiving for those not well-versed in business lingo–a lethal blow to reading comprehension. I think the play could have used a voice plucked from an employee at Everson Steel, or someone designed to better explain the stakes or terms of the deal. A more grounded voice would have allotted room for audience understanding and further juxtaposed the language of the businessmen, lawyers, and journalists.

Junk’s premise can be summarized in three words: greed consumes humanity. Akhtar constructs a world where the prospect of money dissolves morality and self-restraint; he cages a group of rabid animals together and cuts off the food supply, forcing readers to watch as they cannibalize each other just to get ahead. As Merkin, “America’s Alchemist,” enacts his crooked business deal to usurp Tom Everson’s generational family business, a line is drawn in the sand as these two powerful business leaders go head-to-head. With everyone pitted against each other in this tangled chess match for money, Akhtar criticizes America’s insatiable need for wealth and power at the expense of integrity. His prose, while incredibly alienating, urges readers to keep up with this swift and dynamic depiction of rampant greed in the country while also paralleling the divide between the 1% and the 99%. Junk is not just a piece of theatrical fiction, but an open door to the horrifying reality of corporate America.