National Theatre

The Power of Yes

by David Hare

A dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis.

5 STARS
'Devastating... a mesmerising dramatisation'
Daily Mail

4 STARS
‘‘Engrossing... Asks questions to which we all want to know the answers.' Guardian

‘A passionate political documentary' 
Evening Standard

'Riveting... an exhilarating lecture on the banking crisis.' Sunday Times

'If you want to understand the financial crisis you should go to the theatre' Independent on Sunday

In retrospect is it fair to say that the idea that banks could manage risk was a total illusion?

In the wake of the financial crisis, the National Theatre commissioned David Hare to write an urgent and immediate work that sought to find out what had happened, and why.

Capitalism works when greed and fear are in the correct balance. This time they got out of balance. Too much greed, not enough fear.

Meeting with many of the key players from the financial world, David Hare, author of The Permanent Way and Stuff Happens, has created The Power of Yes: a compelling narrative, as enlightening as it is entertaining.

It’s like a ship which you’re being told is in apple-pie order, the decks are cleaned, the metal is burnished, the only thing nobody mentions: it’s being driven at full speed towards an iceberg.

Not so much a play as a jaw-dropping account of how, as the banks went bust, capitalism was replaced by a socialism that bailed out the rich alone.

Read Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis's reaction to The Power of Yes in his blog.

Following the BBC2 drama, The Last Days of the Lehman Brothers and Michael Moore's latest film, Capitalism: a Love Story, Michael Billington writes about current theatre pieces tackling the economic crisis.

‘The big story in the arts this autumn is the way the global financial system came close to collapse...' Read full article.

David Hare talks about the financial crisis in a recent article in The Guardian, ‘the temptation is to treat the financial crisis as though it were an independent phenomenon, a freak event...' Read full article.

'David Hare has tackled the Iraq war, political party funding and railway privatisation... Now, he is turning his attention to another weighty and pressing subject: the banking meltdown.' Read full article

The Independent writes about how "the credit crunch is reinvigorating British theatre..." and how playwrights are responding to the financial crisis.  Read full article.

Watch a video on our Archive site of Mark Thomas at the National Theatre performing his show Mark Thomas: A comic tries to understand the economic crisis on 12 October 2009.