Enron critics&context

Clements on the economic situation

Though the enron crisis and the global financial crisis are not coterminous the company’s collapse with hindsight looks like an early warning sign making the play feel both timely and urgent when it first opened

Skillings depiction as a cult leader

exophoric references to 'drinking the Kool-aid' by traders, aligned with Jim Jones, whose followers' blind faith in his leadership lead to tragic mass murder-suicide of Jonestown 1978

employees

20,000 lost their jobs

MAy 2006

Jeffrey Skilling sentenced to 24 years in jail

Faustus had power for 24 years

Clements

'Enron, then, explores the ways in which faith is capitalism's mirages and promises can end with the whole edifices tumbling down'

Chris Bush

The story endures because greed endures, and ambition endures and we are never short of contemporary figures who believe they can beat the system'

Rachel clements

'That Faustian drive that makes men overreach themselves'

Billington

'Skilling is a marlovian overreacher'


Benedict

'A savage satire on high capitalism'

Hemming

'Prebble conveys the danger and allure of greed'

Clements 2016

This interest in winning, power, and an arrogant over-confidence becomes part of both Skilling and the company’s fatal flaw.’

When was Enron founded

1895

Which state had to suffer ‘rolling blackouts’ as a result of Enron corruption?

California

Bethany McLean claims that Enron executives became victims of what? Parallels with Faustus?

Their own hubris

What was the average severance pay for an Enron employee?

4500

How many employees lost their jobs?

20,000 and $1.2 billion in retirement funds, and retirees lost $2 billion in pension funds.

when is the play

• The play depicts America before the 2008 financial crisis and before 9/11… Presenting the period’s optimistic mindset and sense of possibility.

How was Enron received

• Enron was poorly received by its American audience on Broadway, after being critically renowned in England (first at Minerva Festival Theatre, Chichester).

how was enron wrote

• Prebble originally wrote Enron to be a musical.

How to discuss Enron

anti-Capitalist polemic / theatre of the oppressed / morality play / Brechtian / magic realism / tragedy

Clement on tragic hero

Skilling - as an almost tragic figure in the mould of a Shakespearean hero