| Enron | |
|---|---|
 Poster for the Broadway production | |
| 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 Madisyn Shipman |
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]
Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor, theatre director and actor. He has directed on stage and radio, and worked as an actor across theatre, film, television and radio. He often appears 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.
Martin Faranan McDonagh is an Irish playwright, screenwriter, producer, and director. Born and brought up in London, he is the son of Irish parents. He started his career in the Royal National Theatre with The Pillowman in 2003. He has since written many plays produced on the West End and on Broadway including The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), The Cripple of Inishmaan (1996), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001), A Behanding in Spokane (2010), and Hangmen (2015). He has received four Tony Award nominations, and five Laurence Olivier Award nominations, the latter of which he received three awards for The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The Pillowman, and Hangmen.
Conor McPherson is an Irish playwright, screenwriter and director of stage and film. In recognition of his contribution to world theatre, McPherson was awarded a doctorate of Literature, Honoris Causa, in June 2013 by the University College Dublin.
Sophie Okonedo is a British actress and narrator. The recipient of a Tony Award, she has been nominated for an Academy Award, three BAFTA Television Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. She began her film career in the British coming-of-age drama Young Soul Rebels (1991) before appearing in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995), and Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things (2002).
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 as lead actor.
Speed-the-Plow is a 1988 play by David Mamet that is a satirical dissection of the American movie business. As stated in The Producer's Perspective, "this is a theme Mamet would revisit in his later films Wag the Dog (1997) and State and Main (2000)". As quoted in The Producer's Perspective, Jack Kroll of Newsweek described Speed-the-Plow as "another tone poem by our nation's foremost master of the language of moral epilepsy."
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Aikaterini Hadjipateras, known professionally as Kathryn Hunter, is an American-born British actress and theatre director.
Jeremy Butterworth is an English playwright, screenwriter, and film director. He has written screenplays in collaboration with his brothers, John-Henry and Tom.
Shining City is a play by Conor McPherson, set in Dublin, which was first performed in the West End in 2004.
J. T. Rogers is a multiple-award-winning, internationally recognized American playwright who lives in New York. Rogers has written several plays including Oslo, Blood and Gifts, The Overwhelming, White People, and Madagascar.
Marin Joy Mazzie was an American actress and singer known for her work in musical theatre.
Tom Goodman-Hill is an English actor of film, television, theatre and radio.
Headlong is a British touring theatre company noted for making bold, innovative productions with some of the UK’s finest artists.
Lucy Prebble is a British playwright. She is the author of the plays The Sugar Syndrome, The Effect, ENRON and A Very Expensive Poison. For television she adapted Secret Diary of a Call Girl and co-created I Hate Suzie with her close friend Billie Piper. Since 2018, Prebble is Co-Executive Producer and writer on Succession.
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, Ang Lee, Barry Levinson, and others. Kunken 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'.
Peter Caulfield is an English actor.
Sophie Irene Hunter-Cumberbatch is an English theatre director, actress, singer, and playwright. She made her directorial debut in 2007 co-directing the experimental play The Terrific Electric at the Barbican Pit after her theatre company Boileroom was granted the Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award. In addition, she has directed an Off-Off-Broadway revival of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts (2010) at Access Theatre, the performance art titled Lucretia (2011) based on Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia at Location One's Abramovic Studio in New York City, and the Phantom Limb Company's 69° South also known as Shackleton Project (2011) which premièred at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre and later toured North America.
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