Enron and Faustus Critics

Greed: Billington on Skilling

“Jeffery Skilling: A Marlovian over-reacher”

Greed: Amanda Martin (former employee) on the environment

“It was like a boy’s locker room”

Greed: Simkin on the pope depiction and anti-catholic propaganda

“The depiction of the Pope and his bishops indulging themselves with rich food and drink is fairly blatant, and predictable, anti-Catholic propaganda”

Knowledge: Gall on the strength of Marlow’s play

“The show’s real strength lies in the moral questions it poses”

Knowledge: Clements on Skilling’s world view

“His world view is entirely skewed towards profit, accumulation and speculation”

Consequences of rebelling: Clements on Skilling’s character development

“Goes from being an ‘overweight, balding accountant’ to a quasi-magician [...] to the crumbling paranoiac”

Consequences of rebelling: Brockbank on Faustus beginning to become distressed

“Faustus is beginning to lose his confidence in the heroic consolations of evil and his moral distress is becoming genuine”

Consequences of rebelling: Bevington and Rasmussen on God being absent from Faustus

“We are left… with the perception that God is starkly absent from the play”

Intellectual curiosity: Riggs on Marlowe voicing the aspirations of…

“Marlowe’s writing voiced the aspirations of blasphemers, sodomites, foreigners, unemployed scholars and the mutinous poor in Renaissance England”

Intellectual curiosity: Prebble at Skilling wanting people to understand

“Skilling’s fury at business people who don’t understand as accounting system used by all the big Wall Street investment banks”

Intellectual curiosity: Gatti on man’s intellect vs human endeavour

"Marlow is expressing [...] man's new faith in his own intellectual resources against a deeply rooted Christian concept of the vanity of human endeavour alone"

Loss: Clements on Prebble putting different crashes into the play

“By using metaphors connecting different kinds of crashes together, Prebble suggests that the fallouts of both are equally disastrous, and equally difficult to clean up”

Loss: Brooks on Faustus’ lack of accomplishment

“He cannot find anything really worthy of the supernatural powers that he has come to possess. Faustus never carries out in practice his dreams of great accomplishments”

Risk: Clements on responding to economic contexts

“Playwrights and theatres have responded to the changing economic contexts of their time”

Risk: Gill on Faustus knowing the consequences

“He has been cautioned about the consequences that will ensue if he persists in his chosen action”

Risk: Riggs on Faustus’ 24 years

‘is the greatest and most fundamental thing he buys’

Risk: Gatti on Faustus’ use of hypotheticals

“Faustus realises by now that he can only express [his vision of salvation] in purely hypothetical grammatical forms”

Power corrupts: Prebble on CEO’s as kings and emperors

“We don’t have those kings and emperors any more, the stuff of traditional tragedy but corporate CEO’s are probably the closest we come to it”

Power corrupts: Sales on the pattern between Wagner and Faustus

“Wagner tries to imitate Faustus and the pattern repeats itself when Robin tries to imitate Wagner”

Boundaries: Adams on Prebble exploring the corporate boardroom

“She had explored the most male arena, the last refuge of the patriarchy, the corporate boardroom”

Boundaries: Riggs on Marlow’s convictions

"Cited for disturbing the peace, arrested for counterfeiting, suspicion of murder, felonious assault and public atheism"

Responsibility: Clements on Enron going unnoticed

“Prebble consistently asks us to consider how such massive corporate fraud could have gone apparently unnoticed for so long”

Responsibility: Gill on Faustus not being ignorant

“He has been cautioned about the consequences that will ensue if he persists in his chosen action, [...] He can now make no appeal on grounds of ignorance”

Human weakness: Simkin on Marlow’s audience believing in the spiritual realm

“Many members of Marlowe’s original audience would have understood the spiritual realm as equally real as, or more real than, the physical, material realm”

Human weakness: Clements on Skilling and Roe’s character

“ruthlessly ambitious, competitive, self-assured and self-interested”

Human weakness: Clements on Skilling’s fatal flaw

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

Human weakness: Brockbank on why Faustus cannot repent

“Is it that Faustus cannot repent because he is without grace, and cannot have grace because he will not repent?”

Hubris: Clements on what made people in Enron feel invincible

“A particular version of machismo and power led towards people high up at Enron feeling somewhat invincible”

Hubris: Brockbank on Faustus’ soul enlarging the kingdom of Lucifer

“As before none of the devil’s answers are reassuring. Faustus’ soul will merely ‘enlarge the kingdom’ of Lucifer, and man is tempted only because misery loves company”

Perception and reality: Brockbank on Capitalism exposed

“Capitalism exposed as contrick and illusion”

Perception and reality: Clements on the company underpinned by Fastow

“As the celebrations in the company are underpinned by Fastow’s structures, and as the excited countdown culminates in the Raptors”

Perception and reality: Spencer on the lack of naturalism in Enron

“The lack of naturalism in the production reflects the unreality of Enron itself, part hall of mirrors, part precarious house of cards vulnerable to the faintest nudge of healthy scepticism"

Perception and reality: Brockbank on magicians as entertainers

“The scenes [in Acts 3 and 4] remind us that great magicians…are at best reputable court entertainers and not masters of empire”

Perception and reality: Potter on Faustus distracting himself

“Faustus was using farce to distract himself from his own approaching fate”