The investment management community might find hedge funds endlessly fascinating, but not the theater-going public.
The world's first play about hedge funds and the people who manage them — "Burleigh Grime$"— debuted June 13 off Broadway at New World Stages in New York. Its main character is a hedge fund trader out to figuratively and perhaps literally screw the rest of the world. Critics — who enthusiastically panned the opening performance — found the play woefully inaccurate about the real world of finance and money management, among other problems. New York Times critic Charles Isherwood described it as "feeble-witted."
In a slightly kinder review, Daniel Gross of www.slate.com said: "Of course, making a compelling drama/comedy out of the lives of hedge fund managers was always going to be a difficult task. Hedgies are objects of great interest, largely because of their compensation and the assets they control. But by and large, they're hardworking numbers adepts — you have to get up very early in the morning if you want to beat the market — who lead a pretty tenuous life."
The play itself is likely to have the more tenuous life, going by an amateur review on the online blog, nytheaterthoughts.blogspot.com. One person wrote: "…I'd rather be cutting my arm off with a rusty spoon than watching this show…"
