The Improbable Fall, Rise & Fall of John Law (Part 1)

The Improbable Fall, Rise & Fall of John Law mixes swashbuckling adventure, absurdity, anachronism, and inventive theatricality to tell the unbelievable true story of the man who unleashed the world’s first financial bubble, market crash and currency crisis — all while shaping the global economy we know today.

At the play’s center is John Law, whom historians have alternately described as a financial genius or a treacherous con-man. The play follows John from his early days as a notorious London gambler forced into exile by a duel gone wrong through his greatest insight – the invention of paper currency – to his reign as France’s minister of finance. Along the way it sheds light on the frightening and darkly comic resemblances between our modern financial system and the rigged tavern games of chance where John Law gained and lost his first fortune.