As long as bankers and brokers have had the ability to play with other people's money, they've also had among them a few scoundrels whose definition of "play" was a bit more fast and loose than the average. Such is the life of one Mr. Voysey, patriarch of a wealthy, Edwardian-era English family and head of its well-respected investment firm. When the clan discovers his indulgent and haphazard practices of money-managing, a chaotic debate over the gray areas of investment, insider knowledge and personal complicity ensues.
Such is the premise of Harley Granville-Barker's play The Voysey Inheritance, adapted by David Mamet and presented this spring by Ashfield Community Theater. The tale, though one of greed, class status and injustice, also examines the phenomenon of conscience in an atmosphere of contradiction, rationalization and general resistance of the human mind to act conscientiously when to do so might be in conflict with personal gain.
May 22-23, 29-30, 7:30 p.m., Ashfield Town Hall, Main Street, Ashfield, (413) 628-4574, www.ACTh.org.
