Day Trader, the clever new play by Eric Rudnick now on tap at The Bootleg Theater, could just as well have been called “The Big Scam.” That's because the story mostly deals with an elaborate con job hatched up by three grifters intent on separating a hapless, wanna-be writer named Ron (Rudnick, understudying Danton Stone) from the millions he has just been awarded in a divorce settlement.
Ron, who ironically is a bit of a schemer himself, was married to an unseen rich woman named Brenda -- "the Iron Lady of Hancock Park" -- whose idea of communication was to slip him scribbled quotations from Shakespeare. Kept by Brenda on a meager allowance, he has tried hard to make some dough for himself by writing spec screenplays and dabbling in the stock market via an online trading program (voiced stentoriously by Mo Gaffney).
To describe just how an "insecurity machine" like Ron managed to break his steel-trap pre-nuptial agreement and become a fat cat would be to give away too much. Suffice to say that the three people closest to him had a hand in it: his 15-year-old daughter Juliana (the gifted Brighid Fleming), his golf buddy Phil (Tim Meinelschmidt), and his sexy mistress Bridget (Murielle Zuker).
Day Trader asks an audience to suspend large doses of disbelief, but thanks to its skillful cast, sure-handed direction and some snappy production values -- notably Stephen Gifford's mod-art set, Josh Imlay's drum riffs and the well-choreographed scene changes--the play's twists and turns (and surprise ending) come off remarkably well.
