Never Mind the Crash, Let's Put on a Show!

London's financial community has spent the first half of this week chasing Wall Street down the tubes, and there hasn't been a lot of good news for the sad souls packing up their desks on Canary Wharf ... until now.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is taking pity on canned bankers by offering them free tickets to his musicals.

Yes, Lehman and Merrill employees, this is what your lives have so suddenly come to.

"I thought that free tickets might offer some respite, albeit for a couple of hours, for some of those people who have sadly lost their jobs in the current economic upheaval," the Daily Telegraph in London quotes Mr. Lloyd Webber as saying. "Both The Sound of Music and Joseph are feel-good shows."

Eligible victims of the credit crisis will receive two free tickets for Monday through Thursday performances for one of the shows when they present their P45 (the British equivalent of a pink slip) at the box office.

The offer is open until October 15 and applies only to former employees of financial institutions in London who lost their jobs after September 1. So all you financial services types who got fired over the summer are just going to have to muddle through without the aid of show tunes.

Listen, even though you haven't voluntarily attended musical theater since you were seven, and My Favorite Things gives you the sudden urge to strangle someone, and all you really want right now is a bottomless pint and a dark hole to crawl into ... hmmmm, forgot where we were going with that one.

by Liz Gunnison

• Wall Fall Down: Who Will Survive the Panic?
• Credit Crunched: A Special Report on the Crisis
• One Market Is Holding Up ... So Far