One of Schmitt’s most pessimistic plays is a stylised and polemic analysis of our own time. The play is filled with references to Hamlet and takes place in a dehumanised world with technocrats and golden boys. London in a near future: Golden Joe is the heir of a financial empire. He is a scheming strategist whose only goal is to get rich. His credo is dollars, and his raison d'être is profit. He has become a product of a materialistic world, but he has also been formed by his mother, who has turned him into a robot to spare him from the anxiety and guilt which weighs heavily on herself. However Golden Joe, the perfect machine, breaks down when he sees the ghostly vision of his deceased father on the computer screen, and when he witnesses a random infanticide. He opens his eyes to the rotten values and strategies of the family empire, and is gradually led into the world of feelings and smells – money does not smell; but people do. Golden Joe wants desperately to change the world, but he cannot. Nothing works: charity, humanism, socialism, communism, etc. In the end, he has to realize that capitalism conquers and rules at all times.
