Dallas — Money scams and torrid affairs require good judgment to take a back seat to greed and lust, respectively. Both deadly sins play major parts in Ponzi by Elaine Romero, the mainstage production of Kitchen Dog Theater’s 13th annual New Works Festival.
Though it won an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award in 2010 and was inspired by the Bernie Madoff scandal that broke in 2008, this is its world premiere. It has had readings at Kitchen Dog, the Goodman Theatre and Florida Studio Theatre. Despite all that simmer, this potboiler still needs some salt.
Brian Wofford creates a boxy block world with several tiers of playing areas. The colors of coffee, gold and cash resonate in the faux stone squares that subtly reinforce the house-of-cards image. John M. Flores covers the many changes of unflattering costumes with Tarot card projections and uneasy underscoring that carry us from scene to scene but also seem to say, "Be careful where you place your faith."
Conceived at a writer’s retreat when the Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal broke, Romero drapes a love triangle over the true-life drama and changes the names to protect the innocent, but Romero’s script opens a Pandora’s box of human frailty that director Christopher Carlos'Kitchen Dogs have trouble closing.
Catherine (Christina Vela) plays an heiress alone with her cat, videotaping a diary to her deceased father. Vela’s Catherine is doubly isolated by the video projection through which we see her. Money has brought her mistrust and isolation and Vela plays the pitiful well.
The next scene is a cocktail party where an offstage investment advisor is making a pitch. Catherine meets Bryce (Max Hartman) and Allison (Diane Casey-Box). Allison’s a new-money wife and Bryce’s is the new money. Casey-Box pushes the limits of Allison’s lack of sophistication and Hartman limits Bryce’s charm to pushing innuendo.
Admittedly the punch line-title makes it hard for Ponzi to muster much tension concerning the money, but the affair is fair game for trysty twists. Except for Catherine’s confused combination of rich heiress and liberal politics, the cocktail scene is copied from type. That is until Catherine casually encourages Bryce’s advances. Unfortunately, what the play gains in surprise the character loses in sympathy. The protagonist isn’t so pitiful anymore.
Bryce convinces Catherine to take Allison under her wing and teach her the sophisticated ways of wealth. Catherine starts by convincing Bryce to buy tables at the museum benefit so that Allison can, in turn, entice people to buy. It’s what the rich do, don’t you know? That and invest all their money with shady off-stage investment gurus.
What follows is a mess of finance, affair and affront. Bryce and Catherine carry on. Wife Allison suspects but won’t endanger her arrangement with a confrontation. She’s terrifically naïve, but being uncouth grants her license to ask honest questions. Sometimes they are so blunt as to pop whatever bubble has been blown by the other two.
It’s hard to maintain interest with an unsympathetic protagonist. Maybe that’s why it’s Diane Casey-Box who manages the most moving moment as the jilted woman who’s finally standing up for herself. Catherine has the denouement but the thunder has been stolen.
The message is a Ponzi requires a patsy. It’s great that these women aren’t going to be one anymore. But we’ll root more for one with morals.
◊ The New Works Festival also features readings of new plays and the annual PUP fest. To read a schedule of events, see our listing. 
