HOW DO you take one of the biggest and most complex financial scandals from the dawn of the new millennium and turn it into a piece of easy to understand entertainment?
That was the challenge facing Lucy Prebble in Enron – the story of the spectacular collapse of one of the world's largest energy giants in 2001.
Given that she succeeds on both counts – with flair and intelligence – is nothing short of miraculo
us.
At the same time, this new work retains the cutting edge freshness of a project still in development.
The nuts and bolts of this colossal fraud – which saw the biggest corporate bankruptcy in history - were explained not only in layman's terms but with a visual creativity, depicting the companies that were fabricated to hide the company's debts as monsters.
The addition of song and some slick choreography heightened the contrast between the superficial success of the business which duped so many and the sinister activities at the very foundations which had ruined and rotted the entire operation.
There are some great performances from Amanda Drew, Tom Goodman-Hill and Tim Pigott-Smith – but the show belongs to Samuel West who plays chief executive Jeffrey Skilling. He captures all the intense self-deluded passion of a man who believed he was transforming the way in which a world does business – while in reality turning himself into a common crook, ruining thousands of investors and employees in the process.
Sadly, the lessons that should have been learned from Enron never were – as the crisis in the banking sector has so clearly demonstrated in the past year. This new production may yet serve as a reminder that the time really has come to clamp down on huge city bonuses and unchecked short-termism. But don't hold your breath.
GS
