You don’t hear much about the American dream these days, but for Kofi Grady, a first generation Ghanaian American, the opportunity for betterment in the land of the free is real. Brought up by a disciplinarian father whose definition of success is not just money but job security, he is a young graduate who puts his mathematical skills to work in a trillion-dollar financial company.
Driving him is the sense of comfort and control he experienced as a teenage joyrider in a high-performance car. What he never had he craves the most.
Actor and writer Quaz Degraft knows the world he describes. Like Kofi, he worked in high finance, but rather than end up in an orange jumpsuit helping fellow prisoners with their sums, as his character does, he jumped ship and reinvented himself as a performer. His solo show – back on the Edinburgh fringe after a well-received run last year – paints an insider picture of a corporate culture in which profit and personal success override all other considerations.
In a sweetly told piece of storytelling, featuring a rollcall of colleagues, friends and double dates, Degraft describes the implicit Faustian pact of big business: put in the hours, say the right things, keep quiet about the abuses and wait for the bonuses to roll in.
Above all, this is a #MeToo play told from the male perspective. Kofi is not directly connected to the assault of a female worker but is complicit in its cover-up, much as anyone would be who chooses silence over confrontation, private gain over honourable whistleblowing.
That Degraft makes it seem like an everyday tale of a young man innocently trying to settle into a new job belies his deeper purpose: to reveal the insidious nature of male power. The insight is not new but, in Abigail Onwunali’s stripped-down production, it is subtly done.
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At Underbelly, Bristo Square, Edinburgh, until 31 August
