Enron the Play? You Better Believe It

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 2/23/2010 07:49:00 PM
Are you kidding me? Did we take advantage? That's what we do, that's how the world works! If you want an objective morality, you're living in a dream. So when you ask, 'did we take advantage?', I hear, 'do you make a living?', 'do you breathe in and out?', 'are you a man?'! Yes, we took advantage. And the only difference between me and the people judging me is they weren't smart enough to do what we did. Now, are you gonna judge me or are you gonna help me? -- 'Jeff Skilling' in Enron the Play

Samuel Johnson is attributed with saying that a person who is bored with London is bored with life. Well, add this to London's brilliant parade. Some of you probably know this already, but in case you don't, they've been staging Enron the Play since November of last year and it has just extended its run based on initial success. This play mixes factual elements about the Enron story--routing Internet broadband through pipelines originally intended for delivering energy--with more fantastical takes on true-to-life elements such as CFO Andrew Fastow naming various investment vehicles designed to inflate earnings and conceal debts after Star Wars characters. So, it's a mix of fact and fiction. For good measure, they even throw in a love interest for the disgraced Jeff Skilling.

The play has been receiving quite positive reviews from the business and mainstream press, so yes, it's definitely something I have to see. If you are passing through London and have an interest in financial shenanigans and musicals, it's a must-see. Nixon in China? What we have here is more like artistic license with a heaping financial pretence. They even have an Enron Education Resource Pack [?!]

Given Enron the Play's success, I am once again shopping around my very own Tony Blair: The Musical!