Blame It On The Bankers.(International Edition; THE ARTS)(portraying bankers in television, movie and theater)

Byline: Joanna Heath

A popular villain returns to stage and screen: the financier.

The global financial meltdown has given rise to a newly reinvigorated scapegoat, at least on stage and screen: the evil financier. In "Roaring Trade," a new play that has just finished a sell-out run at London's Soho Theatre, four bond traders get rich off short selling, a practice banned temporarily last year in the U.K. and the U.S. for its destructive effects on the market. "See how good it feels," says Donny, one of the traders, "selling something you don't even own." Evoking the peak before the fall, the play provides an instructive glimpse of traders locked in pointless ego battles, blinded by arrogance to the dangers of risking millions of pounds on one trade. And in a satisfying resolution, the worst of the quartet get their comeuppance and lose their jobs.

The caricature of the greedy, heartless financier playing high-risk poker with honest people's money has an especially powerful hold on the public imagination these days--and that makes for great creative material. "Bankers tend to be young, boorish, gladiatorial men, and those are all things which make good villains," says Steve Thompson, who wrote "Roaring Trade." Putting them at the crux of morality tales gives audiences not only a sorely needed diversion but also a chance to live out their revenge fantasies.

It's not surprising that London, the financial capital of the EU, is ground zero for banker bashing. This winter traditional pantomimes--vaudevillian musical shows--were altered to give audiences the visceral pleasure of hissing and booing evil moneylenders on stage. In the show "Dick Whittington," the appropriately named King Rat stalked the set, carrying out his dastardly plot to bankrupt the island of Gran Canaria by doling out easy loans to small businesses, calling them in all at once, and then buying up the central bank. According to the show's producer, Jon Bradfield, audiences got a big kick out of seeing the Bernie Madoff stand-in get his just deserts, ending the play in penury after his political ambitions are thwarted by "honest Dick" in elections for London mayor. "We hoped they would laugh at the jokes, but they also really bought in to the hissing and booing with the downfall of King Rat," he says. "There was a huge amount of catcalling."

Later this year a musical adaptation of our financial woes, "Crunch: The Musical" (tagline: "See it while you can still afford it!"), will hit London's West End. Conceived years ago as a satire on office life, its writers decided to cash in on the ...