Enron (LATW-CD-2011)
Our most recent financial meltdown – the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s – is still radiating radioactivity throughout the business and political worlds. But, obviously, there have been many such outrages throughout American history, and housing bubbles is not the first of such nonsenses. Only a decade ago, the late Enron Corporation became the sine qua non of bad behavior.
At the time of its scandalous demise, Enron was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with claimed revenues of over $100 billion. By the next year it was revealed that its reported financial condition was actually gained by extensive accounting fraud, from which Enron has since become a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption. (Thank you, Wikipedia!)
When such high-flying financial wizards (in the darkest sense of the word) were found to have used nefariously ingenious behavior to make money, they imploded and the higher-ups went to jail (Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow) or died (suspiciously, Kenneth Lay).
That is what Lucy Prebble’s comic drama is based on. As directed by Rosalind Ayres (a Los Angeles Theatre Works veteran), the simplicity of the scheme is laid out for listening. What helps enormously, of course, is the shrewd casting she and LATW Producer Susan Albert Loewenberg achieved. Such stalwart actors as Steven Weber (Skilling), Gregory Itzin (Lay), Greg Germann (Fastow) and Amy Pietz (as Claudia Roe, another co-conspirator), set the mood. Speed and clarity are what work here. The story is complicated, natch (it took years to build up), but Prebble lays it out here smoothly. Listening to the inter-actions (amid vile language) between the characters, with their probable-denials and outright lying, the two hours move very quickly. And it’s really funny, as well. The entire company is spot-on with their characterizations (especially considering the lack of rehearsal time): Chris Butler, Jackie Emerson, Pamela J. Gray, Kasey Mahaffy, Jon Matthews, Julia Mc Livaine, Russell Soder, Kenneth Alan Williams, and Matthew Wolf.
We all need to know when Big Business corrupts Government (Big or Small) and Prebble’s play spells out in this one particular scenario the reality that should be a wake-up call for Americans. ‘Cause it ain’t over yet. Stay tuned for more of the same, wrapped up in different color’d paper. We can only hope that Justice will prevail at that time, instead of letting the perps walk.