Did Critics Think Burleigh Grime$ Was a Good Investment?

Roger Kirby's financial-minded Burleigh Grime$ features a trio of familiar faces of the small screen: Just Shoot Me's Wendie Malick, Desperate Housewives' Mark Moses and Good Morning, Miami's Ashley Williams. The production, which opened at New World Stages on June 13, also has music by Tony-nominated songwriter David Yazbek. Did critics think these elements made Burleigh Grime$ a cash cow?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Rob Kendt in his Broadway.com Review: "Roger Kirby's flimsy stinker of a play, Burleigh Grime$, is about a Wall Street buccaneer who habitually inflates and deflates the value of ephemeral companies to make a stock-market killing. So I guess it counts as a kind of backhanded tribute to the play's thematic resonance when I say that director David Warren's pointlessly lavish new off-Broadway production made me think 'tax shelter…' Kirby's plotting is plentiful but weak, confusing satire's license for exaggeration with a penchant for utter fantasy."

Charles Isherwood of The New York Times: "The play features a pair of skilled actors [Malick and Moses] known for recent television work… Incidental music is by David Yazbek… These putative assets are, unfortunately, painfully ill served by Mr. Kirby's play, which is long on ludicrous plot and short on fresh humor… The production works hard to persuade us that all this big-money talk is wildly erotic by accenting the conniving tête-à-têtes between the central characters with would-be steamy dance combinations… But heat, comic or sexual, is the last thing generated by this ragged comedy, which can't even capitalize on the assets of its appealing cast. It's moderately fun to watch Ms. Malick stalk the stage in killer heels and arch her eyebrows meaningfully as she flings out wry zingers. Too bad they ain't got much zing. But Mr. Moses lacks the unctuous charm needed to make the slimy Grimes captivating."

Frank Scheck of The New York Post: "Sex, money and rock 'n' roll are three of my favorite things, but these elements add up to very little in Burleigh Grime$. This fast-paced-to-the-point-of-exhaustion comedy about Wall Street machinations and media manipulation is neither entertaining nor substantive enough to make more than a fleeting impression. Not that the production is likely to last long enough to register one."

Marilyn Stasio of Variety: "Hyperkinetic production toplined with recognizable TV faces slickly conveys the heartless world in which people are bought and sold like junk bonds. But the banality of the good guys takes the edge off the comedy, leaving us no one to root for in this bad, bad world… Helmer David Warren keeps the hypnotic pace up by holding the actors to a robotic rhythm and using an onstage band dominated by two drummers to hammer out the beat supplied by David Yazbek Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Cell phones are worn like weapons and loaded for big game. The visual drive is just as intense, with banks of TV screens, computer screens, ticker tapes and giant clocks flashing and whirling in the multicolored cacophony of giant pinball machines. By necessity, all this chaos must slow down for the plot-and here's where the show gets in big trouble.

Linda Winer of Newsday: "Speaking of selling short, Burleigh Grime$, which opened last night at New World Stages, works way too hard to say almost nothing about Wall Street high rollers and the financial media. Even if Roger Kirby's greed-is-good satire did not feel 20 years late, his material would be as labored as that dollar sign in the title. Despite the ambitions of David Warren's zippy production and a heavy-lifting cast led by Wendie Malick Just Shoot Me, things manage to be both slick and dull, obvious and incoherent, exhausted and exhausting."