
Terence Rattigan’s 1963 play stars a sociopathic businessman named Gregor Antonescu. The character was based on two real men, Ivan Kreuger and Samuel Insull. Kreuger was known as the Match King because he controlled more than two thirds of the worldwide match production. Insull was an investor and innovator. Both were ruthless, ambitious businessmen just like Man & Boy’s main character. Frank Langella starred in a recent Broadway revival celebrating the 100th anniversary of Rattigan's birth.
The play Man and Boy is about a corrupt financier named Gregor Antonescu and is set in the 1930s. Antonescu’s son is a musician rebelling against his father’s corrupt and greedy ways. With his father representing everything he sees as wrong with capitalism, the boy becomes a socialist. The show is a study in how the financier’s inability to love affects him and those around him.