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    King of Thieves
    King of Thieves
    King of Thieves
    Ebook119 pages55 minutes

    King of Thieves

    By George F. Walker

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    About this ebook

    New York City, 1928. Master-thief Mac must join an FBI sting operation against a cadre of corrupt bankers. Music, murder, and mayhem ensue – at the speakeasy where criminals scheme and on Wall Street where financiers conspire.

    This trenchantly satirical play was first produced at the Stratford Festival in 2009, where director Jennifer Tarver described it as being loosely based on John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728) which was later immortalized in the great Brecht-Weill composition The Threepenny Opera (1928). Readers familiar with these works will delight in Walker’s inspired pairing of Mac and Polly, Peachum and his missus, Jenny Diver, and a host of others within the corrupt world of Wall Street bankers immediately before the 1929 market crash. Readers meeting these characters for the first time will find much to enjoy in Walker’s ready wit and keen sense of story.

    When the FBI blackmails Peachum into helping bring down a group of corrupt bankers, he partners with Mac, his son-in-law, to discover that the bankers are using their wealth to inflate the market, plotting to pull their assets just before the bubble bursts. They scheme to make new for- tunes by providing loans after everyone else goes bankrupt. If all of this sounds distressingly familiar, it should.

    At its heart, King of Thieves, like both its predecessors, is an examination of criminal behaviour at all levels of society, and of the disturbing truth that everyone can fall prey to dishonesty and corruption. But the element of fun in Walker’s script makes us laugh and his sense of zaniness reflects the bafflement many of us feel when contemplating our own world: a place where men of dubious moral integrity still inhabit the corridors of power and are still not taken to task for their dishonourable – if not downright criminal – behaviour.

    Cast of 11 men and 4 women.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTalonbooks
    Release dateApr 15, 2012
    ISBN9780889227569
    King of Thieves
    Author

    George F. Walker

    George F. Walker has been one of Canada’s most prolific and popular playwrights since his career in theatre began in the early 1970s. His first play, The Prince of Naples, premiered in 1972 at the newly opened Factory Theatre, a company that continues to produce his work. Since that time, he has written more than twenty plays and has created screenplays for several award-winning Canadian television series. Part Kafka, part Lewis Carroll, Walker’s distinctive, gritty, fast-paced comedies satirize the selfishness, greed, and aggression of contemporary urban culture. Among his best-known plays are Gossip (1977); Zastrozzi, the Master of Discipline (1977); Criminals in Love (1984); Better Living (1986); Nothing Sacred (1988); Love and Anger (1989); Escape from Happiness (1991); Suburban Motel (1997, a series of six plays set in the same motel room); and Heaven (2000). Since the early 1980s, he has directed most of the premieres of his own plays. Many of Walker’s plays have been presented across Canada and in more than five hundred productions internationally; they have been translated into French, German, Hebrew, Turkish, Polish, and Czechoslovakian. During a ten-year absence from theatre, he mainly wrote for television, including the television series Due South, The Newsroom, This Is Wonderland, and The Line, as well as for the film Niagara Motel (based on three plays from his Suburban Motel series). Walker returned to the theatre with And So It Goes (2010). Awards and honours include Member of the Order of Canada (2005); National Theatre School Gascon-Thomas Award (2002); two Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama (for Criminals in Love and Nothing Sacred); five Dora Mavor Moore Awards; and eight Chalmers Canadian Play Awards.

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      Book preview

      King of Thieves - George F. Walker

      FIRST PRODUCTION NOTES

      King of Thieves was first performed at the Stratford Festival Studio Theatre August 12 to September 10, 2010, with the following cast:

      CAST

      MAC: Evan Buliung

      POLLY: Laura Condlin

      PORK: Oliver Becker

      PEACHUM: Jay Brazeau

      MYRNA: Nora McLellan

      BROWN: Nigel Bennett

      STRINGER: Paul Fauteux

      JENNY: Stephanie Roth

      TINA: Mary Antonini

      IVES: Cyrus Lane

      VINNIE: Seán Cullen

      CHRISTIE: Trent Pardy

      GREEN: Shane Carty

      MERCER: Sandy Winsby

      HALLIWELL: Scott A. Hurst

      Waiters, Beggars, and other roles: Richard Lee, Jennifer Patterson, Jay T. Schramek

      ARTISTIC CREDITS

      DIRECTOR: Jennifer Tarver

      DESIGNER: Peter Hartwell

      LIGHTING DESIGNER: Michael Walton

      SOUND DESIGNER: Thomas Ryder Payne

      DRAMATURGE: Bob White

      MOVEMENT: Kate Alton

      FIGHT CAPTAIN: Richard Lee

      MOVEMENT CAPTAIN: Mary Antonini

      FIREARMS ADVISOR: Daniel Levinson

      FIGHT DIRECTOR: Todd Campbell

      ASSISTANT FIGHT DIRECTOR: Michael Dufays

      ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Ravi Jain

      ASSISTANT DESIGNER: A.W. Nadine Grant (Ian and Molly Lindsay Young Design Fellow)

      ASSISTANT LIGHTING DESIGNER: Tristan Tidswell

      STAGE MANAGER: Anne Murphy

      ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER: Emma Laird

      APPRENTICE STAGE MANAGER: Elizabeth McDermott

      PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER: Marylu Moyer

      MUSICAL DIRECTOR: John Roby

      MUSICAL STAGING: Tracey Flye

      ASSOCIATE MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Laura Burton

      MUSICAL ASSISTANT: Britta Johnson

      PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Jessica Stinson

      SETTING

      New York City. Fall of 1928.

      PEOPLE

      MAC: a thief

      POLLY: his wife, also a thief

      PORK: one of his crew

      PEACHUM: a fence

      MYRNA: his wife, also a fence

      BROWN: FBI supervisor

      STRINGER: FBI agent

      JENNY: a singer, and a thief

      TINA: a singer, and a thief

      IVES: Pinkerton agent

      VINNIE: speakeasy owner

      CHRISTIE: a beggar

      GREEN: a banker

      MERCER: a banker

      HALLIWELL: a banker

      And a number of Waiters, Beggars, a Socialite, an Innocent Civilian, and two Federal Agents

      King-of-Thieves-Title.jpg

      SCENE 1

      The hall of a large house belonging to GREEN, the banker. MAC, eating sunflower seeds and reading from a pamphlet, waits while his henchman, PORK, nervously prepares to cut a canvas out of a frame he is holding.

      MAC

      This guy lived most of his life in poverty …

      PORK

      Well, he sure made a killing at some point. Look at all the stuff in here.

      MAC

      Not the owner of the house. The painter. Tuberculosis, cataracts, wife died, son killed in the war … and the few paintings he sold, he sold for pennies … He croaks and, two years later, they’re going for thousands.

      PORK is about to start cutting.

      MAC

      Slowly, slowly … it’s not much good to us if you carve it up.

      PORK

      I’m a little nervous. Maybe you should do it.

      MAC

      If I keep doing it, how you ever gonna learn? You want to be a snatch-and-grab artist your whole life?

      PORK

      It’s what I’m good at.

      MAC

      If you’re so good at it, how come you spent most of the past ten years in the slammer? (gestures to painting) Just be patient. If you butcher it, the master of the house isn’t gonna want it back.

      PORK

      That’s the plan? You’re gonna try to sell it back to him?

      MAC

      Guys who owns houses like this, they love their art, especially if it’s from Europe. They probably love it more than they love their kids.

      PORK

      Or I guess we’d be stealing their kids.

      MAC

      If we were the kind of people who stole kids … which we’re not. (hears something) Shhhh … What was –

      PORK reaches inside his coat, reveals a gun. MAC shakes his head. PORK drops his hand, leaving the gun in his jacket.

      IVES

      (from the darkness) Okay … stop right there … and just stay … very still. (approaches while holding his own gun) You. Drop the knife and step away from the painting.

      PORK looks at MAC. MAC just smiles and steps a little towards IVES.

      MAC

      He can’t do that.

      IVES

      Why not?

      MAC

      He’s not finished yet.

      PORK

      You want me to drop him?

      MAC

      Not yet …

      IVES

      Hey, if anybody’s gonna be dropping people here, pal … You think I don’t know how to use this thing or something?

      MAC

      No. If Pinkerton agents know anything, they know how to shoot people.

      PORK

      One of them shot my brother for no reason.

      MAC

      Well, he was beating the crap out of someone at the time.

      PORK

      Yeah, a goddamn strikebreaker.

      MAC

      Right. Yeah … (to IVES) He means for no good reason.

      IVES

      (to PORK) I told you to step away from that painting.

      MAC

      Look, I need to ask you a question. Do you have a family … people who need your financial support?

      IVES

      Yeah, my mother. What of it?

      MAC

      Well, who’s gonna take

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