TWO PLAYS

Two plays about financial goings on in the oil industry. The world is run by the rich. Their influence over government policy in the so-called democracies is far greater than the voters’. Elsewhere, there isn’t even a pretence that aren’t in control. They defy the law and are praised for it. They are embraced by politicians who claim to represent the people. Yet where are they in literature? In drama, the kitchen sink movement kicked off the trend of focusing on the lives of the poor, the working-class, the common folk. Once excluded from drawing-room drama, it was assumed that bringing their experience to the stage would alert social conscience. Decades of this doesn’t seem to have slowed the slither rightwards. Meanwhile, in literature, the rich are more or less invisible. Their way of thinking is unexplored. By and large, the people who rule the world are absent from the stage.