Enron (Modern Plays)

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He also stated its failure to earn nominations at the Tony Awards in major categories was its "kiss of death". It transferred to the Noel Coward Theatre in January 2010 and will run there until 14 August before embarking on a UK tour. The only difference between me and the people judging me is they weren't smart enough to do what we did. The people in here are so bad as to be one-dimensional caricatures, which I suppose is partly the point Prebble is making.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. 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'. Enron was premiered in Reykjavik City Theatre in September 2010, in Dublin as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival in October 2010 and in Helsinki (Helsinki City Theatre) in November 2010.I'm glad that my library had a digital recording of the production when it ran in LA because even though I would have enjoyed it if I read the script, I don't think I would have appreciated it more were it not for the recording to know how it was played out. The entire ENRON case - where the company committed one of the largest cases of financial fraud in history by misrepresenting earnings to improve their performance, modifying balance sheets and a little light laundering - is so bombastic, so ridiculous that it's hard to believe it really happened.

What keeps me away from this particular subject is the fear of dryness: of technical jargon that, though fascinating, requires a lot of mental effort to slog through. With a winning mix of classical drama and sharp satire, Prebble tells the story of Jeffrey Skilling, the former president and man behind the collapse of the Texan energy comapny in 2006. Once the market loses confidence, however, Skilling's schemes are revealed for what they are: a fraudulent fantasy. I haven't been including many plays in my reading challenges lately so I figure I would change that and begin with this one. I mean, this is the issue with reading a play in general, and I'm sure that seeing this staged with some really great actors would make this a more engaging experience.But the pulse and vigour of play and production stem from their ability to make complex financial ideas manifest. It plays like farce, yet it accurately portrays the fraudulent shenanigans that were behind the scandal. Produced by Headlong, Enron premiered at Chichester's Minerva Theatre on 11 July 2009 and opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September, before transferring to London's West End Jan - May 2010 and to Broadway April 2010.

Enron premiered at the Chichester Festival Theatre (11 July – 29 August 2009), before London transfers to the Jerwood Downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre from 17 September to 7 November 2009 and then the Noël Coward Theatre from 16 January to 14 August 2010 (after a cast change on 8 May). I also remember seeing that this production was up on Broadway and was very curious to check it out because it seemed very surreal at the time for me to see a production about a real event to include like a singing chorus and raptors running around the stage.Directed by Rupert Goold with associate Sophie Hunter, [3] the cast featured Samuel West as Jeffrey Skilling, Tom Goodman-Hill as Andrew Fastow, Amanda Drew as Claudia Roe, and Tim Pigott-Smith as Ken Lay. As a fellow critic, I respect Brantley's right to his opinion; what is dismaying is his failure to see what Prebble and Goold were up to [. The Guardian 's critic Michael Billington speculated that it was The New York Times ' "hostile" review that contributed to its premature closure.

Amanda Drew as his rival, Tim Pigott-Smith as Enron's avuncular founder, and Tom Goodman-Hill as the greed-driven Fastow, haunted by the scaly raptors which symbolise the shadow-companies, are also first-rate.Charting the notorious rise and fall of the eponymous company and its founding partners Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, Lucy Prebble's Enron is a pulse-racing and rage-inducing parable, exploring the limits of greed. Enron is a magnificently imaginative play combining documentarian realism with expressionistic flourishes. In The New York Times review of the Broadway production, Ben Brantley wrote, contrary to some other critics, "even with a well-drilled cast that includes bright Broadway headliners like Norbert Leo Butz and Marin Mazzie, the realization sets in early that this British-born exploration of smoke-and-mirror financial practices isn’t much more than smoke and mirrors itself.