Enron | |
---|---|
Written by | Lucy Prebble |
Characters | Claudia Roe Kenneth Lay Jeffrey Skilling Andy Fastow |
Date premiered | 17 September 2009 |
Place premiered | Festival Theatre, Chichester, United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
Subject | The Enron scandal |
Setting | USA, 1992–2001 |
Official site |
Enron (stylised as ENRON) is a 2009 play by the British playwright Lucy Prebble, based on the Enron scandal. [1]
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). [2] 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. [4]
Enron premiered on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on 8 April 2010 in previews, with the official opening on 27 April. Directed by Rupert Goold with associate Sophie Hunter, the scenic and costume design was by Anthony Ward, lighting by Mark Henderson, music and sound by Adam Cork, video and projection by Jon Driscoll and movement by Scott Ambler. Gregory Itzin starred as Kenneth Lay with Norbert Leo Butz as Jeffrey Skilling, Marin Mazzie as Claudia Roe, and Stephen Kunken as Andrew Fastow. [5] The Broadway production of Enron closed on 9 May 2010; [6] it lasted just over a month. The Guardian 's critic Michael Billington speculated that it was The New York Times ' "hostile" review that contributed to its premature closure. [7] He also stated its failure to earn nominations at the Tony Awards in major categories was its "kiss of death". [7]
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.
The play concerns the financial scandal and collapse of "ENRON", the American energy corporation, based in Texas. Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling and his boss Kenneth Lay are shown, as well as Skilling's protege Andy Fastow, who rises to become the chief financial officer.
Character | West End | Broadway |
---|---|---|
Claudia Roe | Amanda Drew | Marin Mazzie |
Kenneth Lay | Tim Pigott-Smith | Gregory Itzin |
Jeffrey Skilling | Samuel West | Norbert Leo Butz |
Andy Fastow | Tom Goodman-Hill | Stephen Kunken |
Gayle Davenport | Gillian Budd | Jordan Ballard |
Lehman Brothers | Peter Caulfield / Tom Godwin | Rightor Doyle/ Anthony Holds |
Security Officer | Howard Charles | Brandon Dirden |
Irene Gant | Susannah Fellows | Lusia Strus |
Arthur Andersen | Stephen Fewell | Anthony Holds |
Senator | Orion Lee | Tom Nelis |
Elise Da Luca | Eleanor Matsuura | January LaVoy |
Trader | Ashley Rolfe | Brandon Dirden Rightor Doyle Anthony Holds Ty Jones Ian Kahn Tom Nelis Jeff Skowron Noah Weisberg |
Lawyer | Trevor White | Ian Kahn Ty Jones Donald Ferguson |
Daughter | Mary Stewart Sullivan |
Tim Walker, the Sunday Telegraph critic, gave it five stars, drawing parallels with the plot to that of King Lear. "While it isn't done any more to say this in the financial pages, I say it here with conviction: Enron is a strong buy," he wrote. [8] [9] [10]
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. Enron is fast-paced, flamboyant and, despite the head-clogging intricacy of its business mathematics, lucid to the point of simple-mindedness. But as was true of the company of this play's title, the energy generated here often feels factitious, all show (or show and tell) and little substance." [11]
Michael Billington, critic for The Guardian , dubbed Brantley's comments an "obtuse and hostile review", [7] stating that "Enron's fate was sealed the moment Brantley's review appeared [...] 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 [...] But no serious play on Broadway can survive a withering attack from The New York Times, which carries the force of a papal indictment". [7]
Enron won the 2009 Theatrical Management Association award for Best New Play and was also nominated for Best Performance in a Play (Samuel West). In the 2009 Evening Standard Theatre Awards, it won Best Director [12] and was nominated for Best Actor (for West) and Best Play (for Prebble). [13] [14]
The play received Tony Award nominations for the 2010 Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre, [15] 2010 Best Featured Actor in a Play (Kunken), 2010 Best Lighting Design of a Play (Mark Henderson), and 2010 Best Sound Design of a Play (Adam Cork). [16]
Andrew Stuart Fastow is an American convicted felon and former financier who was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation, an energy trading company based in Houston, Texas, until he was fired shortly before the company declared bankruptcy. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance-sheet special purpose entities used to conceal Enron's massive losses in their quarterly balance sheets. By unlawfully maintaining personal stakes in these ostensibly independent ghost-entities, he was able to defraud Enron out of tens of millions of dollars.
Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor, theatre director and narrator. He has directed on stage and radio, and worked as an actor in theatre, film, television, and radio. He was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of Leonard Bast in the Merchant Ivory film adaptation of E. M. Forster's novel Howards End (1992), and was later nominated for the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of the title role in Rupert's Land (1998). In 2010, he was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jeffrey Skilling in Lucy Prebble's Enron. He has appeared as reciter with orchestras and performed at the Last Night of the Proms in 2002. He has narrated several documentary series, including five for the BBC about the Second World War.
Conor McPherson is an Irish playwright, screenwriter and director of stage and film. In recognition of his contribution to world theatre, McPherson was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature in June 2013 by University College Dublin.
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Norbert Leo Butz is an American actor and singer. He is best known for his work in Broadway theatre. He is a two-time winner of the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, and is one of only nine actors ever to have won the award twice.
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Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 American documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, who are credited as writers of the film alongside the director, Alex Gibney. It examines the 2001 collapse of the Enron Corporation, which resulted in criminal trials for several of the company's top executives during the ensuing Enron scandal, and contains a section about the involvement of Enron traders in the 2000-01 California electricity crisis. Archival footage is used alongside new interviews with McLean and Elkind, several former Enron executives and employees, stock analysts, reporters, and former Governor of California Gray Davis.
Aikaterini Hadjipateras, known professionally as Kathryn Hunter, is a British–American actress and theatre director, known for her appearances as Arabella Figg in the Harry Potter film series, Eedy Karn in the Disney+ Star Wars spinoff series Andor, as the Three Witches in Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, and most recently as Swiney in Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things. Hunter was born in New York to Greek parents, and was raised in England. She trained at RADA, where she is now an associate and regularly directs student productions, and studied clowning with Philippe Gaulier.
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Marin Joy Mazzie was an American actress and singer known for her work in musical theatre.
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Stephen Michael Kunken is an American actor. He is known for the roles of Ari Spyros on Showtime's Billions and Commander Putnam on Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale. His film work includes work with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Paul Greengrass, Ang Lee, Barry Levinson, Ron Howard and others. Graduating with top honors from The Juilliard School, Kunken has an extensive and celebrated theater career appearing on Broadway in 7 different Productions and countless off-Broadway and Regional productions. He is most readily known for playing Andy Fastow in the Broadway play Enron, for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Featured Actor in a Play. Other Broadway credits include Frost/Nixon and Rock 'n' Roll'.
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