ENRON

15/10/09, Royal Court

Written by Penelope
Enron is now a byword for fraud. A giant corporate puzzle built on flimsy foundations which came apart at the seams. Some of the details are complicated and, even now, defy belief. Before I say what I thought of this play, I feel I should declare an interest. As a journalist working in the US in 2001, I covered the Enron saga, meeting people who'd lost all their savings, visiting the company's HQ in Houston and attending the congressional hearings which attempted to bring those at the top of the empire to account.

Lucy Prebble's play based on this sorry tale blends fact and fiction, farce, musical and tragedy into one production. And it works. Sam West is outstanding as Enron's CEO, Jeffrey Skilling. He is, by turn, insipid, creepy, imperious, venal and pathetic. He's on stage almost the whole evening so it's a role which demands stamina in addition to great acting. One of my favourite scenes was when he and Tom Goodman-Hill (who plays the CFO, Andy Fastow) hold a "meeting" in an imaginary gym on make-believe exercise bicycles. The audience was roaring with laughter.

Fastow and Skilling were the two executives who dreamt up some of the worst aspects of the Enron fraud - a company with high share prices built on nothing. Explaining mark to market accounting and shadow companies isn't an easy prospect but Lucy Prebble's script achieves this with aplomb. And this play resonates well in the current recession.

It's directed by Rupert Goold and is fast moving, entertaining and bold. The scenery and lighting (designed by Anthony Ward and Mark Henderson respectively) are imaginative and stark. There are songs, dances and moments of disbelief at the absurdity of the protagonists' behaviour. Goold is a director full of ideas. There were a couple of moments when one or two of them might have been edited out, as I was in danger of being overwhelmed. But it seems unfair to criticise anyone for having too many ideas! Also deserving a mention are Tim Piggott Smith as the wilfully blind company Chairman, Ken Lay (accompanied by three blind mice) and Amanda Drew as Claudia Roe who also worked for Enron.

For me, there was one glaringly awful moment in the evening which was a crass "reconstruction" of September 11th 2001, complete with projections of planes and tiny pieces of paper falling from the sky. I didn't feel this was necessary and it made me feel uncomfortable to use these iconic historical moments for entertainment. But that squeamishness aside, I loved it and the play thoroughly deserves its imminent West End transfer.

ENRON

12/10/09, Royal Court

We thought it was absolutely cracking, stuffed full of invention and first-rate performances. Directed by Rupert Goold: compare his Turandot which was also full of ideas and invention, but on that occasion they were often baffling or at odds with the music and the direction of the drama. Not here.

There were songs, dance routines, fantastic lighting, "raptors" in the basement (the fancy accounting devices and off balance sheet vehicles designed to cook the Enron books, which eventually came back to devour their creators), swift sketches of members of Congress, analysts, bankers and others blinded to Enron's failures by stupidity, greed, arrogance or a desire not to seem out of step with the prevailing consensus... oh, and Lehman Brothers sharing a single overcoat.

Sam West played Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO, developing from backroom geek to master of the universe to desperation and later paranoia as it all comes crashing down. Towards the end his lawyer tells him the principal accusation against Enron is that it "took advantage" of others (including the state of California, whose power supplies it deliberately disrupted to drive up the price). "Taking an advantage is what we do in business," Skilling retorts. Except of course that it isn't: making an honest profit by providing goods or services is one thing; unfairly exploiting legal loopholes and other people's gullibility while producing dishonest accounts is quite another.

I suspect the principal female character was an invention, there to contrast the Skilling approach to business with something more traditional (as well as to create a major role for a woman... except that she disappears two-thirds of the way through, when she's fired). She wants to build power stations in India, a market she thinks has huge potential, and she is of course right. But building power stations takes years, requires huge amounts of capital and provokes strikes and demonstrations and political problems; Skilling's approach to business makes everyone at Enron instantly rich overnight.

The parallels with the banking bubble are eerie. This is a company which started as a conventional business (oil and power generation) and grew massively and unsustainably by turning itself into a trading entity, many of whose products were incomprehensible to anyone but insiders. This was a play about the way businesses can lose touch with the underlying realities as clever people think up ever cleverer wheezes to make money. In the end Enron was little more than a Ponzi fraud.

Tim Piggott-Smith played the chairman, Ken Lay, as a good ole Texan boy. But A, who is American, said the accents for the most part were excruciating.

Lucy Prebble, who wrote it, is only 26: a fact which has inevitably excited much remark. We await her next with huge anticipation.

Penelope went to see it a few days later. I agree with almost everything she says.