ENRON - theatre review
rehna January 24th, 2010
Want a hot tip? Invest in Enron. Yeah you heard; Enron. Yes, that Enron, the company that ‘defined the corporate crime of the 20th century.’
This Enron however is the amazing new play from Lucy Prebble. It’s just opened at the Noel Coward theatre and is easily one of the best plays I’ve seen for years.
And if you’re thinking a weighty, wordy piece of theatre about commodity trading and de-regulation of electricity might not exactly be your idea of a good night out think again. This is an all singing, all dancing, very funny, exuberant piece production that puts many a musical ‘extravaganza’ to shame with the sheer creativity of its delivery of what could have been just a dull documentary on stage.
The events and characters are real of-course. The Enron scandal is only a few years old and court appeals are still outstanding. The political figures forming the backdrop to the unfolding scandal are the likes of Bill Clinton and George W Bush, the world events include the dawn of the Millennium and 9/11.
The performances are uniformly excellent as, more unusually are the American accents from British actors. Tim Piggot-Smith is Ken Lay, Tom Goodman-Hill is Andy Fastow playing Jurassic Park with other people’s money and Samuel West is Jeffrey Skilling, the monumentally driven CEO who bails out just as the sh!t is about to hit the fan. West is in superb form, changing before our eyes from the bumbling nerd convinced he is a visionary to the assured master of the universe to poster boy for corporate corruption on an epic scale.
It can only be matter of time before the big screen version is made with every actor in Hollywood vying for a role, including the top actresses as there are some juicy female parts too.
But for now this has to be the hottest ticket in town in theatreland.
- The Review Salon
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