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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Fiona Mountford's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Rupert Goold.
Cast: Tom Goodman-Hill, Amanda Drew, Samuel West, Tim Pigott-Smith
Description: Lucy Prebble's contemporary drama charting the infamous financial scandal using live music and video. Directed by Rupert Goold.
“Magnetic”: Samuel West as Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling and victim of her conscience Claudia Roe (Amanda Drew), inset
Two years ago Rupert Goold, the finest director of his generation, hit the big time with an exhilarating Chichester production of Macbeth. He returns to the south coast with the highbrow hit of the year, the collapse of US energy giant Enron brilliantly reconfigured by Lucy Prebble as classical tragedy.
Aristotle himself would relish the hubris in this narrative of an overreaching organisation that plotted, Macbeth-like, to be king, this time of the financial markets.
Prebble’s great skill lies in her ability to take us through complex concepts with ease, without bemusing or, worse, patronising us.
There’s also the magnetic momentum of a thriller, as Jeffrey Skilling (Samuel West) goes from nerdy outsider to slick Enron CEO, en route enmeshing the company in some of the most outré accounting and opaque business practices ever seen.
Prebble sensibly doesn’t labour the point, but it’s hard not to find ominous echoes of recent disastrous financial events in the way those surrounding Skilling are loath to ask questions, so long as the stock price keeps heading upwards.
That same stock price is displayed on an electronic ticker-tape screen that runs constantly and transfixingly across the back of the stage in Anthony Ward’s spot-on design, which is all slick business aesthetic. With such dazzling components, it’s no wonder that Goold’s production buzzes and fizzes right from the start.
It incorporates all manner of innovations — stock-market analysts forming a barbershop quartet to sing Skilling’s praises, the cast brandishing light-sabres to celebrate deregulation of the energy market — without ever losing sight of its primary focus.
We’re left in no doubt about Enron’s punishingly patriarchal corporate culture, as the one person with something resembling a conscience, executive Claudia Roe (brassy Amanda Drew), is cunningly edged out by Skilling.
West superbly suggests a monomaniacal man powered by something far more interesting than mere greed, namely a brilliance with theoretical concepts that eventually disconnects him entirely from reality.
His partner in Enron’s tenebrous nerve centre is chief financial officer Andy Fastow (Tom Goodman-Hill), whose idea it is to set up bogus companies to house Enron’s losses.
In an ingenious touch, these so-called “Raptors” spring to life as an anthropomorphic metaphor, as actors sporting dinosaur heads start to prowl around ominously. As the phrase goes, “buy now” for an outstanding evening.
In repertory until 29 August, then at the Royal Court from 17 September. Box Office: 01243 781312. www.cft.org.uk
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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