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