Enron (Modern Plays)

Product Information

Inspired by real events, but told as a sprawling, dynamic tragedy, the play follows CEO and anti-hero Jeffrey Skilling through the journey of Enron’s rise and fall. Lucy Prebble's debut play The Sugar Syndrome won her the Critics Circle and George Devine Awards for Most Promising New Playwright in 2003. At once a case study and an allegory, the play charts the notorious rise and fall of Enron and its founding partners Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who became 'the most vilified figure from the financial scandal of the century. Not only is this an exceptionally conceived story, it taught be a huge amount about financial systems and the banking crisis. The velociraptors in Jurassic Park symbolize nature's response to man's hubris, the metaphorical ones that are deployed here are simply greed embodied.

And, if nothing else, it's a valuable piece of theatre for revealing the inner machinations of an industry that the average Joe knows little about. As profits fail to materialise, Skilling turns to his sidekick, Andy Fastow, to create shadow companies to conceal mounting debts. ENRON is produced in the West End by Matthew Byam Shaw, Act Productions, Caro Newling for Neal Street Productions, Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Headlong Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre. Scene seven with the security officer where Skilling started acting delusional after losing his power was enjoyable to read, mainly because I really disliked the character.And AFTER reading this play, I'm not sure to what extent I know the Enron scandal, but I certainly know more at the end than when I started. Not only is he articulating the company’s secret attitude to business ethics, he’s also encapsulating playwright Lucy Prebble’s fearlessly imaginative approach…watching 'the corporate crime that defined the end of the twentieth century’ isn’t just instructive, it’s a gloriously guilty pleasure…a cross between an insightful analysis and a savage satire of high capitalism as moral vacuum.

I thought it was too short, as there seemed to be a build up of the rivalry between Roe and Skilling, but it ended quickly when she was fired. It was one of the most successful smoke and mirror shows in business history so it makes sense that Lucy Prebble's play would be built upon the thrill of the illusion, creating a spectacle so large and impossible to hate that it gave the world rose tinted glasses.It's probably not a play that's supposed to be read since it relies so heavily on putting on a bombastic show to dazzle the audience (I'm still kicking myself for missing the play when it came to Edinburgh last year) but even without the visuals, there's a very entertaining tragi-comedy in these pages.