Aristotle might have had something to say about the fact that, on the same day as Enron opened in the West End after sell-out runs at Chichester and the Royal Court, its director Rupert Goold won a Critics’ Circle Award for his outstanding production. Was this a snippet of synchronicity too far, even for a must-see highbrow hit? After all, if there’s one thing that those working on Lucy Prebble’s dazzling account of the collapse of the Texan energy giant know, it’s that the boom times can’t last for ever.
To this observer, who gave a five-star rave for the Chichester premiere, a small but crucial helping of sparkle has disappeared. Maybe it’s been drowned under the six-month deluge of superlatives that Prebble rightly received for the thrillingly clear yet delightfully playful — there’s a barbershop quartet of stock market analysts, for example — way she conveys the overarching financial hubris of Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling (Samuel West). Skilling’s disastrously over-ambitious idea was to count as profit all of Enron’s mooted future earnings; he’s abetted by chief financial officer Andy Fastow (Tom Goodman-Hill), who creates a chain of bogus companies to hide Enron’s losses.
Goold gives all this his customary whizz-bang treatment, flooding the stage with ticker-tape electronic screens of Enron’s stock price, neon lights and, when the US energy market is deregulated, light-sabres for a spectacularly well-drilled ensemble of financial Everypeople.
West skilfully suggests Skilling’s metamorphosis from an overweight, bespectacled nerd to superfit financial Superman, although his astonishing thriller-like momentum, which had the clinical purity of Greek tragedy, has dissipated. This time around, I was more struck by Tim Piggott-Smith as Enron’s disingenuous founder, prepared to turn a blind eye to Skilling’s dealings while the going’s good. Slight quibbles notwithstanding, this will set the West End’s stock riding high. Until 8 May. Information: 0844 482 5140, www.enrontheplay.co.uk.
Enron
Noel Coward Theatre
St Martin's Lane, WC2N 4AU
If ever a play seemed to reflect the times in which we live, that play is surely Enron.
27 Jan 2010
The young playwright Lucy Prebble was working on the piece long before the recent financial collapse and the prolonged economic crisis into which it has plunged us.
But in telling the story of the spectacular demise of the gigantic American energy corporation in 2001, in which a bubble suddenly burst, she hit upon a model, and a dramatic metaphor for all our present woes. Lucky timing has undoubtedly played a part in the success of the play which has enjoyed sold out runs in both Chichester and at the Royal Court before this present West End transfer. But seeing the play for the second time, I’m left in no doubt that there is also a formidable dramatic intelligence at work here.
There is something of the classical tragedy about the piece as she charts the rise and fall of an enterprise whose stock prise rose and rose even as it concealed its debts in a series of shadow companies that it passed off as assets. It is a tale of hubris, recognition and despair though one can’t help but note some important differences from our present situation.
The guilty men at Enron were sentenced to jail. Already our bankers are back on the bonuses and Fred Goodwin got to keep his pension. No one has accused our own dear bankers of fraud of course. It would however be pleasant to detect a few signs of penitence.
What’s remarkable about the drama though is that it makes even a financial ignoramus like me feel up to speed on issues I don’t really understand.
There is superb clarity in Prebble’s story-telling as well as high drama, and terrific bravura about Rupert Goold’s often dazzling production that brings the mysterious world of high finance to vivid, comprehensible life.
The shadow companies for instance, are presented as voracious raptors, eating up the debt down in the bowels of the corporation. The chaos of electricity deregulation in California, which led to a series of power cuts, is turned into a dazzling Star Wars-style choreographic routine with light sabres. The Lehman brothers are represented as Siamese Twins, a barbershop quartet sings share prices.
Perhaps there is a touch of the flash Harry about Goold as a director, but the theatrical trickery seems to reflect the play’s subject matter, in which appearance is constantly at odds with reality.
The production is is also blessed with some terrific performances. Samuel West grippingly charts the transformation of Enron’s chief executive Jeffrey Skilling from gauche nerd to ruthless financial master of the universe, before his sudden decline into panic and despair almost makes you feel sorry for the bastard.
Tim Pigott-Smith is wonderfully creepy as Enron’s founder, Ken Lay concealing deep-seated greed and ruthlessness with folksy charm and religiosity, while Amanda Drew brings a welcome touch of female sexuality to this masculine play as a hardboiled executive finds herself shafted, in every sense, by the odious Skilling.
In our present hard times, at least those involved with this production will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Rating: * * * *
How fitting that the West End transfer of Lucy Prebble’s much-lauded Enron, a play about the corruption and collapse of corporate finance, should open on the very day that the UK officially emerged from a recession caused by those very factors.
The great Samuel West leads the same cast as that which first appeared at the Chichester Minerva Theatre in July last year, then at the Royal Court in the autumn, and the company crackle with energy and wit now just as they did in each of the previous incarnations of the show. Anthony Ward’s set looks fantastic on the larger stage of the Noel Coward Theatre after the more confined environment of the Court and Rupert Goold’s thrilling staging, complete with light sabre choreography, stalking raptors and line-dancing traders is a theatrical feast. This transfer is just what Prebble’s astoundingly mature play deserves.
- Jo Caird
NOTE: The following FOUR-STAR review dates from September 2009, and this production's run at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.
The exciting thing about Lucy Prebble’s Enron is its revelation that there is no business like big business, and a second viewing confirms the gutsiness and vitality of her second major play, the best look at mayhem in the markets since Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money over twenty years ago.
Although recent television documentaries on the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in New York have throbbed with a quiet, chilling sense of meltdown and devastation, Rupert Goold’s endlessly inventive production moves the astonishing, hubristic creation of a shadow capitalism built on the “real” capitalism into the realms of dance and metaphor.
And at its centre is the tragic figure of the Enron president, Jeffrey Skilling, whom Samuel West brilliantly presents as a geeky, rather childish champion of the mark-to-market philosophy turning first into a predatory shark of the trading floor and then an anguished victim of his own obsessive empire-building, haunted by an accusatory refrain from his little daughter.
With its endless red ticker tape showing the share prices, the gleaming, mirage-like photographic imagery of the skyscrapers melding into the symbolic terrorist targets of eight years ago, shortly after the Enron collapse, and the neon strip lighting that becomes hand-held weaponry, Anthony Ward’s design does look a little cramped on the Court stage.
In the open airiness of the Minerva in Chichester there was a greater sense of a constellation of capitalism, and the use of boxes as rostra for the traders was more effective in a floor-level arena. But visual expression is so endemic to this show’s meaning, it’s hard to see how Goold and his team could have turned the handicap of the Court’s compactness to advantage.
Maybe they will sort this out when, after this sold-out run, Enron transfers to the Noel Coward in the New Year. The performances of Tim Pigott-Smith as the Enron owner Ken Lay and Amanda Drew as Skilling’s office lover and chief rival Claudia Roe (a fictional character) are as strong as ever.
The show is epic, noisy, colourful and cartoonish – flying directly in the face of the predominantly puritanical Royal Court aesthetic – but it’s so heatedly on the button of what happened in all of our lives, you won’t want to miss it. And watch out for Tom Goodman-Hill’s fresh-faced financial controller, Andy Fastow, a wonderful study in cunning survival and the satanic strategy skills that did for Skilling and his castle in the night sky.
- Michael Coveney
NOTE: The following FIVE-STAR review dates from July 2009, and this production's premiere at the Chichester Minerva Theatre.
The story of Enron, the energy company that became, at the time, America's biggest bankruptcy, sounds so fantastic that it could have been fashioned from the pen of a particularly imaginative writer. The fact that much of this tale is true, heightens the excitement of this thrilling Headlong production, the highlight of what has been a strong Chichester season. Lucy Prebble's morality tale is the perfect vehicle for Rupert Goold and his love of video, back projections, harsh lighting and sound effects. Goold uses every technique at his disposal to bring the the story to life – particularly in an innovative routine based on light sabres. Anthony Ward’s set is a brilliant backdrop to the events that rocked America.
At the heart of Prebble's tale is a superb performance by Samuel West as Jeffrey Skilling, the architect of the fraud. First glimpsed as a plump, gauche but ambitious executive, we see him gradually take control of Enron and enact his own fantasy of selling everything, including the weather. West captures every twitch of a man wholly driven by the need to make money, not so much for its own sake but by the need to create something innovative. Driven eventually into mental disintegration, West gives us a vision of a man driven by his obsession with Enron stock price, because, as he tells his daughter, that’s how he knows how much he’s worth.
The other leads give strong performances too. Tom Goodman-Hill is the socially inept but financially brilliant Andy Fastow, the guy who devised the scheme that brought Enron down, while Tim Pigott-Smith as Enron chairman Kenneth Lay smiles toothily and pockets the cash.
Prebble has invented a character, Claudia Roe, as the antithesis of Skilling and his machinations. Her vision of a more conventional future, based on actually manufacturing something, is rejected by Lay and after that she is used as a moral counterpoint to Skilling's schemes. I found this the least convincing part of the play, despite Amanda Drew's spiky portrayal of the snubbed Roe. It’s too neat a dramatic device; a real-life exec would have left or pocketed the cash and asked no questions.
It is however, not a documentary. Prebble leaves out several major players and her portrayal of the real-life characters is too far-fetched. In particular, Lay was an executive who had been in business for years, his life spent mired in controversy (including a previous financial scandal at Enron) - he was far from the James Stewart-like innocent of Pigott-Smith’s portrayal.
These are small quibbles: this is an outstanding production of a thought-provoking and, above all, entertaining play. Headlong is bringing Enron to the Royal Court later this year, if you miss it in Chichester, catch it there - this is a theatrical treat.
After all the trauma Houstonians went through with the collapse of Enron in 2001, including the loss of jobs and life savings, it's hard to imagine that the financial disaster has been transformed into a hit piece of entertainment, a hip London play that will soon be coming to Broadway with an all-American cast. (Soon to be a major motion picture?)
That's the case with Enron, the creation of 29-year-old playwright Lucy Prebble and veteran director Rupert Goold. Described as “an epic tragicomedy” by the Times of London, the play has earned rave reviews and sold out its 22,000-seat fall run.
Convicted Enron CEO Jeff Skilling may be cooling his real heels in a federal penitentiary while appealing his sentence, but his British avatar, actor Samuel West, is the dominant figure in Prebble's script as a magnetic combination of villain and anti-hero. Prebble's first version of Enron was a musical, but the songs were eventually dropped, leaving a drama leavened with a madcap trading-floor dance number and actors costumed as ogres to represent Enron's festering debt.
The late Ken Lay is portrayed by actor Tim Pigott-Smith as a Southern patriarch, and former chief financial officer Andy Fastow, also imprisoned, is played by Tom Goodman-Hill as a charmingly slippery character.
According to the Times review, “somehow you find yourself rooting for the man [Skilling] who you know is going to cause the biggest corporate calamity in American history. Hoping, entirely against hope, that the Enron party doesn't have to end.”
Perhaps that reaction is possible from British audiences who can view Enron's demise with the historical distance accorded a work of Shakespeare.
One suspects that Houstonians would not so easily look past the real-life characters to embrace their stage counterparts if Enron ever comes to town as a touring production. It might take an acting tour de force to get local audiences cheering for the principals of this sad story.
One suspects that Houstonians would not so easily look past the real-life characters to embrace their stage counterparts if Enron ever comes to town as a touring production. It might take an acting tour de force to get local audiences cheering for the principals of this sad story.
On the other hand, we do have a history of forgiving, and rehabilitating, our most colorful rascals …
The fall of Enron provides meaty fare for the theatre, says business reporter Nick Clark, who covered the story
23 September 2009
The Enron scandal was described as the corporate crime of the past century and, eight years after the energy company's bankruptcy, America is still trying to come to terms with the fall out. Enron forced an overhaul of US financial regulation, left 22,000 employees jobless and many penniless and, the year after it reported revenues of $101bn, collapsed in just 24 days.
It was driven by men who claimed they wanted "to change the world" and who ended up broken and behind bars. A story with the scale and scope of a Greek tragedy, it has now been dramatised for the stage.
Enron is the second work by Lucy Prebble who garnered critical acclaim for The Sugar Syndrome six years ago. In a mark of quite how topical finance has become, the remaining run at the Royal Court Theatre in London is sold out and it is set to transfer to the West End.
Enron has roots going back to 1932 but was created in its most recent form in 1985 from the merger of the Northern Natural Gas Company and Houston Natural Gas. It grew to become one of the largest companies in the US, reporting billions in revenues and boasting of political ties to the White House. The only problem? It was all a mirage. Enron inflated the value of its assets and profits, and set up a labyrinthine network of offshore accounts and dummy companies in a bid to artificially inflate the share price. Shortly after 9/11 the company imploded. There are parallels with today. Debt spiralling out of control based on assets that were worthless. The idea, as one character says, that "things are becoming divorced from their underlying realities".
Prebble has clearly done her research, and caveats the work heavily as "inspired" by real events to avoid blunting the drama. She points those wanting to look further towards Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind's The Smartest Guys in the Room and the excellent documentary of the same name, as well as Loren Fox's Enron: The Rise and Fall.
To dramatise a story about an American company for the stage, though, an oil and gas company at that, expressing the atmosphere of the time, explaining complex accounting structures and bringing the characters to life is no mean feat.
Enron is presented as an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza, with a sumptuous set. A few of the musical numbers grate, but the set pieces – especially a striking scene detailing how Enron manipulated California's electricity grid in the wake of deregulation using lightsabres – are spectacular.
The play prejudges no financial knowledge and stops to explain the jargon along the way. If this results in the action dragging slightly, it's probably worth it.
While characters start as pastiches of Wall Street's Gordon Gekko and other stereotypes from Hollywood, they are lifted by the excellence of Samuel West as Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and Tim Pigott-Smith as chairman Ken Lay, a man more interested in picking the interiors for his corporate jet then dealing with the collapse of the company.
It may be the most notorious corporate crime in living memory, but beyond the jargon and the Wall Street names lies the basest of human emotions. Enron is wildly ambitious and if it doesn't quite provide all the answers, it certainly – to borrow Enron's advertising slogan – manages to "ask why".
Premiered this summer in Chichester and now making the move to Sloane Square's Royal Court, Lucy Prebble's second play Enron has achieved a quite astonishing level of success. Bolstered by four- and five-star reviews earlier this year, the entire run at the Royal Court sold out before opening and a West-End transfer has already been announced. Fortunately, the play lived up to its billing and provided a highly entertaining and educational evening.
Telling the story of Enron, a much-feted energy corporation whose surprise collapse in 2001 leaving billions of dollars of debt, Prebble has done a fantastic job in making the subject of financial manoeuvring very accessible and engaging, whilst never patronising her audience, and her work is given extra strength due to the current state of the economy and our subsequent realisation that this was not an isolated incident as first believed.
One of the main strengths of this play is its unerring plausibility, and this is perfectly exemplified by the well-drawn characters and the performances of each of the leads. There are no pantomime villains here, no evil chuckling over bags of swag, but rather 3 businessmen making increasingly bad decisions. Tim Pigott-Smith as Enron's wily founder Ken Lay is full of backslapping southern bonhomie which belies his ruthlessness and complicity as the share price soars; Tom Goodman-Hill was highly impressive as the financial officer Andy Fastow whose inventive schemes to hide the debts are brilliantly explained in a key scene with a Russian doll-like collection of boxes; and finally Samuel West is just superb as Jeffrey Skilling, the chairman who led Enron on its merry dance. We follow him on his tumultuous journey from the overweight, gauche Harvard ingenue on his arrival, through his ruthless climb to the presidency (shafting his rival, the ever-excellent Amanda Drew), losing weight and morals as he rises to the top and then desperately trying to maintain the untenable position through ever-increasingly outlandish schemes. West imbues his performance with enough humanity so that one does end up sympathising somewhat with him, yet all-the-while remaining a thoroughly unlikeable chap.
The rest of the company also deserve a mention though, as they work extremely hard and do an excellent job: singing, dancing, playing at dinosaurs, fighting with lightsabres, all and more are carried out with aplomb and fantastic energy, the scene changes in particular were admirably swift.
Rupert Goold's direction here, particularly in the first half, is simply dazzling. Bringing together elements of song, movement and video, and weaving in highly effective lighting, sound design and a visually arresting set, the combined effect is often breathtaking. There's a strong vein of dark comedy which highlights the absurdity of what Enron was able to get away with, and whilst the energy of the play subsides slightly in the second half with the shift to a more traditional story-telling and less of the Gooldisms, the sheer quality of the acting carries it through.
This is a great play, which at any other time would have been well-received anyway due to the inventiveness of the direction and clarity in demystifying the murky pool of financial nefariousness, but its timing now and the light it sheds on the reasons for the state of the world today elevates it to outstanding. Thought-provoking and educational, but above all, highly educational: do not miss!
The U.K.'s Theatrical Management Award (TMA) nominees have been announced and receiving top nods include Lucy Prebble's Enron, currently playing at London's Royal Court before it opens at the West End's Noel Coward Theatre in January 2010 and on Broadway in April, and the familiar Broadway favorite Spring Awakening. The awards ceremony will be hosted by Nichola McAuliffe at Lyric Hammersmith on Nov. 1.
Enron is the recipient of multiple nominations, including 2009 Best New Play. Also nominated in this category are Chris Goode's King Pelican (Theatre Royal, Plymouth), and Fraser Grace's The Lifesavers (Colchester's Mercury). Samuel West, who portrays Jeffrey Skiling in Enron, is nominated for the Best Performance in a Play Award. Anna Francolini, Irene Macdougall and Marc Warren also received nominations in this category for thier performances in the regional shows The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Pillowman, respectively.
Spring Awakening, which played the Lyric Hammersmith before transferring for a short run at the West End's Novello Theatre, has been nominated for Best Musical. Additional contenders in this category include Spend Spend Spend and the Ambassadors Theatre Groups tour of West Side Story.
The TMA is the UK's major business association for organisations and companies including theatres and arts venues, involved professionally in the production and presentation of the performing arts. Throughout the year the Association promotes an extensive programme of conferences, seminars, training and professional development events for the performing arts industry and those working within it. Since 1991 the Annual TMA Theatre Awards have celebrated the creative excellence and outstanding work seen in UK theatres each year. In 2005 the TMA established the TMA Management Awards to champion and applaud the successful business initiatives and acumen of performing arts organisations.
For more information on and a complete list of the nominees in all categories, visit http://www.tmauk.org/.
Samuel West Stars in Goold's Chichester ENRON
Date: 3 April 2009
Samuel West (pictured) will star as Jeffrey Skilling in the forthcoming premiere of Lucy Prebble's ENRON at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester (11 July - 29 August), directed by Rupert Goold (See News, 19 Feb 2009).
A co-production with Headlong and the Royal Court, where it transfers following its run in Chichester, ENRON explores one of the most infamous scandals in financial history, the collapse of the Enron energy company. Samuel West has a long association with Chichester, with previous acting credits there including Doctor Faustus, Cain and The Master and Margarita. He also directed The Lady's Not for Burning in 2002, which marked his directorial debut.
Since then he has become well established as a director, helming productions including Dealer's Choice in the West End and Waste at the Almeida. His most recent stage appearance was last year in The Family Renuion at the Donmar, while other acting credits include Betrayal (Donmar), Hamlet and Richard II (both RSC).
Further casting is still to be announced. Currently at the Minerva, Simon Gray's The Last Cigarette, starring Felicity Kendal, Nicholas Le Prevost and Jasper Britton, continues to 11 April, before transferring to Trafalgar Studios (See News, 27 Mar 2009).
Samuel West (pictured) will star as Jeffrey Skilling in the forthcoming premiere of Lucy Prebble's ENRON at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester (11 July - 29 August), directed by Rupert Goold (See News, 19 Feb 2009).
A co-production with Headlong and the Royal Court, where it transfers following its run in Chichester, ENRON explores one of the most infamous scandals in financial history, the collapse of the Enron energy company.
Samuel West has a long association with Chichester, with previous acting credits there including Doctor Faustus, Cain and The Master and Margarita. He also directed The Lady's Not for Burning in 2002, which marked his directorial debut.
Since then he has become well established as a director, helming productions including Dealer's Choice in the West End and Waste at the Almeida. His most recent stage appearance was last year in The Family Renuion at the Donmar, while other acting credits include Betrayal (Donmar), Hamlet and Richard II (both RSC).
Further casting is still to be announced. Currently at the Minerva, Simon Gray's The Last Cigarette, starring Felicity Kendal, Nicholas Le Prevost and Jasper Britton, continues to 11 April, before transferring to Trafalgar Studios (See News, 27 Mar 2009).
In other Chichester casting news, Adrian Rawlins and Clare Holman have been confirmed to play Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra in Heidi Thomas' new play The House of Special Purpose, which runs from 20 June tp 22 August 2009 in the Minerva Studio. It looks at the doomed Romanov family's final days imprisoned in a merchant's house prior to their execution in 1918. The production is directed by Howard Davies, whose recent credits include Burnt by the Sun, Gethsemane, and Her Naked Skin.
- by Theo Bosanquet
Reporter: Caroline Bishop, first published Mon 06 Apr 2009 11:27
Samuel West has been cast in Lucy Prebble’s new play Enron, which opens at Chichester Festival Theatre in July before transferring to London’s Royal Court from 17 September.
West, who will play the role of Jeffrey Skilling in Chichester and the capital, has previously appeared at Chichester in Doctor Faustus, Cain and The Master And Margarita. The actor’s recent London stage credits include Betrayal and The Family Reunion at the Donmar Warehouse, while he previously played Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company. A former Artistic Director of Sheffield theatres, West is also an experienced director with credits in London including Dealer’s Choice at the Menier Chocolate Factory and Trafalgar Studios and Waste at the Almeida theatre.
Based on real life, Enron explores one of the most infamous scandals in financial history, reviewing the tumultuous 1990s and casting a new light on the financial turmoil in which the world finds itself today. Playwright Prebble was Laurence Olivier Award-nominated for her debut play, The Sugar Syndrome, which was also staged at the Royal Court, in 2003.
A co-production between Chichester Festival Theatre, Headlong theatre company and the Royal Court, Enron is directed by the Artistic Director of Headlong, Rupert Goold. The in-demand director has previously staged Macbeth and Six Characters In Search Of An Author in Chichester. Both productions transferred to the West End, with Macbeth winning him the Best Director Laurence Olivier Award in 2008. Goold’s other London directorial credits include the current production of Oliver! at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, King Lear at the Young Vic, No Man’s Land at the Duke of York’s and, for Headlong, The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot at the Almeida theatre and Faustus at Hampstead theatre.
Chichester Festival Theatre has a history of transferring productions to London. Both Calendar Girls and The Last Cigarette open in the West End this month after originating in Chichester.
Enron opens at the Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Downstairs on 22 September after previews from 17 September and plays until 31 October
