It’s perhaps fitting that the programme accompanying the play ‘Enron’ looks more like an ‘A’ level text book than the plush, arty offering you normally buy in a theatre.  It wouldn’t be surprising if this play was on the English Literature syllabus for 2020, because ‘Enron’ is a vivid and entertaining depiction of what are turning out to be the defining events of our times – financial mismanagement and chaos. Dramatist Lucy Prebble effortlessly turns highly complex transactions into a striking and enlightening narrative, but ‘Enron’ is also much more than a very clever docudrama. The scandal is brilliantly placed in the context of the human condition. Prebble explores what it is in our nature that leads to events such as these, and comes up with highly thought provoking conclusions.

       What perhaps elevates ‘Enron’ even further is that Prebble creates a complex protagonist for the play, the boss of Enron through most of this period Jeffrey Skilling.  One of the questions on that 2020 English Literature syllabus may well be: to what extent could Skilling be called a tragic hero? The Skilling of the play is greedy and arrogant, but Prebble undoubtedly admires his imagination and the scope of his ambition. He manifestly suffers when his dream is destroyed.

      Sam West communicates the light and shade of Skilling perfectly, and the whole ensemble rise to the challenge of a play that is astoundingly accomplished in its grasp of technique and language. This is just Lucy Prebble’s second work, and it’s frightening to think what this dramatist could achieve when she hits her straps.

 

‘Enron’ is at the Royal Court Theatre London until November 7th.