ENRON

Noel Coward Theatre

10.02.10

It's Monopoly money – trading in a virtual realm far removed from reality, until the house of cards collapses and ordinary people, loyal employees, lose everything.

The Enron affair should have been a wake-up call. But this revival serves to remind us that this year's crunch, today's collapses, are nothing new.

Lucy Prebble's ground-breaking piece, premièred in Chichester last year, coming to the West End via The Royal Court, shortly to cross to Broadway, is a triumph to compare with Enron's own soaraway success.

It makes its points with a heady mixture of didacticism, metaphor and Greek Tragedy. Sometimes we are just told stuff – we are the innocent child in the play. Dollars become seconds; Enron is “worth” $60 billion dollars; each billion is 32 years.

The metaphors – the light sabres and raptors of Fastow's geeky imagination – become real on stage. And the familiar characters, father figure, younger brother, hubristic ruler, play out their tragic fate. There is song and dance, music, lighting and a break-neck pace – you dimly understand just how thrilling handling all this money can be. And slapstick, too, with the Lehman brothers conjoined in a vast overcoat.

Sam West is rivetting as the arrogant Skilling, physically changing from nerd to hero to paranoid failure. The real Skilling got 24 years, we should remember. These guys are not fictions. Amanda Drew is Claudia Roe, the female rival in a macho world. And Tim Piggott-Smith is totally convincing as the old-school CEO. One of the most effective scenes was also the simplest - “two guys in a room” as the financial alchemist Fastow [Tom Goodman-Hill] tempts Skilling down the slippery slope of fraudulent trading.

And I did wonder to what extent Rupert Goold's imaginative set-pieces – the trading floor, for instance – are essential to the success of the drama. I can imagine the whole thing as a more intimate, Arthur Miller-ish tragedy.

Nonetheless, an informative as well as entertaining piece, a roller-coaster ride through an alien world of cash and capital, and a lesson to us all. I wonder how it will go down on Broadway ….