‘Burgh Vivant – Chairman and CEO Ken Lay (Ken Bolden) is torn when choosing his successor. Everyone thinks he will choose Claudia Roe (Christina Weber), but he pivots and picks Jeffrey Skilling (Joseph McGranaghan) instead, setting up one of the largest corporate scandals in American history in Lucy Prebble’s whip-smart play, “Enron.”
When Andy Fastow (John Michnya) figures out how to hide Enron’s debt in a series of Matryoshka doll corporations, playing the shell game with the books, the new leader doesn’t fire him; he promotes him to CFO. Skilling, an atheist working for the religious (the Republican kind of religious) Lay, has turned greed into his god, displacing Gordon Gekko as Greed’s greatest spokesmodel.
If “Enron” was “King Lear,” Claudia was the Cordelia. While far from innocent, Prebble posits that she would have been a more intelligent choice to lead the doomed company.
Prebble isn’t interested in telling a straight docudrama about the history of corporate malfeasance; she populates the story with myth and metaphor. The Board of Directors is depicted as Three Blind Mice, Fastow’s accounting folders, affectionately dubbed the raptors after the insidious creatures from Jurassic Park, writhe about in the accounting office (though the dinosaurs look more like Sleestaks from Sid & Marty Krofft’s “Land of the Lost), the Lehman Brothers (Jax RF McAtee and Joes Perez IV) are portrayed as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the lawyers are gussied up like icons of Justice, and the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen (Jamie Agnello) is a ventriloquist’s dummy.
The cast is huge (bigger than “The Cherry Orchard’), but they are equally talented.
McGranaghan is excellent as the ruthless leader with two Achilles’ heels: his initial affair with Roe and his daughter (Zelda Ungerman, in an on-screen-only appearance).
It’s a star turn for Michnya, a mild-mannered nerd among tech bros who becomes the biggest, meanest bully, still struggling with his inner and outer demons (see: Dancing Sleestak).
Weber plays the tough-as-nails Roe with ingenuity and some integrity (it’s a fraction, but its a slightly higher ground than the other snakes in the pit). The actor gives a strong performance.
Bolden’s Lay is delightful. He plays him as befuddled and bewildered by the stronger personalities in Skilling and Roe.
There are some standouts in some smaller roles; particularly Amy Landis as a no-nonsense lawyer and later as a Southern-fried Congresswoman, Perez in a variety of roles, Tru Verret-Fleming as a lawyer, and Jamie Agnello as the aforementioned ventriloquist at Arthur Andersen.
Co-choreographers Peter Kope and Michele de la Reza are gloriously responsible for the writhing raptors and stock traders wheeling furniture around in a Office Depot ballet.
Director Kyle Haden has an eye for the absurd, but keeps tight reins on the zaniness in favor of the emotional weight of the story, especially at the end when Landis and Parag S. Gohel portray victims of the corporation’s collapse.
The projection design is clever. Kolton Cotton’s stock tickertape is akin to Landru (the imperious god of Beta III in Star Trek’s “Return of the Archons”).
The scenic design by Sasha Jin Schwartz is divine, especially when exiting the show. There is a reveal (no spoilers) that is stunning and comical as you leave the show.
If you’re looking for an Oliver Stone/Jordan Belfort sort of ” The Wolves of Louisiana Street, Houston, TX” historical drama, you won’t find it here. Instead, you will find a clever, intelligent longform poetic masterpiece on America and how it has failed its people in favor of the almighty dollar.
The show is brilliant, but be prepared to shed a tear for your country, because the Enron corporate greed machine was kindergarten for the slimiest of slimeballs who are now running the U.S.A.
