Aristotle might have had something to say about the fact that, on the same day as Enron opened in the West End after sell-out runs at Chichester and the Royal Court, its director Rupert Goold won a Critics’ Circle Award for his outstanding production. Was this a snippet of synchronicity too far, even for a must-see highbrow hit? After all, if there’s one thing that those working on Lucy Prebble’s dazzling account of the collapse of the Texan energy giant know, it’s that the boom times can’t last for ever.

To this observer, who gave a five-star rave for the Chichester premiere, a small but crucial helping of sparkle has disappeared. Maybe it’s been drowned under the six-month deluge of superlatives that Prebble rightly received for the thrillingly clear yet delightfully playful — there’s a barbershop quartet of stock market analysts, for example — way she conveys the overarching financial hubris of Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling (Samuel West). Skilling’s disastrously over-ambitious idea was to count as profit all of Enron’s mooted future earnings; he’s abetted by chief financial officer Andy Fastow (Tom Goodman-Hill), who creates a chain of bogus companies to hide Enron’s losses.

Goold gives all this his customary whizz-bang treatment, flooding the stage with ticker-tape electronic screens of Enron’s stock price, neon lights and, when the US energy market is deregulated, light-sabres for a spectacularly well-drilled ensemble of financial Everypeople.

West skilfully suggests Skilling’s metamorphosis from an overweight, bespectacled nerd to superfit financial Superman, although his astonishing thriller-like momentum, which had the clinical purity of Greek tragedy, has dissipated. This time around, I was more struck by Tim Piggott-Smith as Enron’s disingenuous founder, prepared to turn a blind eye to Skilling’s dealings while the going’s good. Slight quibbles notwithstanding, this will set the West End’s stock riding high.
Until 8 May. Information: 0844 482 5140, www.enrontheplay.co.uk.