Broadway Blog - ENRON Review Roundup

Based on real-life events and using music, dance and video, Lucy Prebble's Enron explores one of the most infamous scandals in financial history, reviewing the tumultuous 1990s and casting a new light on the financial turmoil in which the world currently finds itself.

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: "Yet even with a well-drilled cast that includes bright Broadway headliners like Norbert Leo Butz and Marin Mazzie, the realization sets in early that this British-born exploration of smoke-and-mirror financial practices isn’t much more than smoke and mirrors itself."

Erik Haagensen, Backstage: "Playwright Lucy Prebble gets points for ambition. "Enron" wants to be a bold, slashing piece of political theater that exposes the greed and selfishness at the heart of American capitalism through the titular energy company's collapse. I'm in sympathy with her point of view but unpersuaded by her methodology. Her play is like a big, shiny, beautifully wrapped package that once eagerly ripped opened reveals a horde of Styrofoam peanuts through which you search vainly for the anticipated present."

Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press: "The financial finagling is not as much fun as it should be in "Enron," a flashy yet lumbering docudrama that has arrived on Broadway trailing rave reviews from England, where maybe they take a much keener delight in all-American chicanery."

Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune: "And with Prebble, and director Rupert Goold, throwing in everything from fireworks to musical numbers to puppets to a chorus of ravenous dinosaur raptors (a riff on the debt-eating financial creations of Andy Fastow, Skilling’s CFO sidekick), “Enron” is a mish-mash with one foot in the tatty, good-night-out tradition of British political-populist theater, and another inarguably hypocritical foot clearly enjoying a rare chance to blow a Broadway budget."

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter: "Bottom Line: Stylized theatrical depiction of the notorious energy company's rise and fall doesn't provide a satisfying return on the audience's investment."

Brandan Lemon, Financial Times: "None of them, however, can quite overcome the Oxbridge cleverness of the presentation and the initially intriguing, ultimately banal script. ( )"

Richard Dunham, Houston Chronicle: "The characters, superbly acted and ably directed, don't evolve very much during two-plus hours onstage. We learn a lot more about a corrupted company and America at the turn of the millennium than we do about the demons driving its main characters."

Charles McNulty, LA Times: "Ultimately, the piece’s strength lies not in its storytelling but in its twisted pageantry. Skilling isn’t intimately known by the end of the play, but his tunnel-vision mentality and moral blind spots have been thrown into high relief."

Linda Winer, Newsday: "For "Enron" to be any more timely, the financial satire with music would have to be happening in the offices of Goldman Sachs' lawyers. If Rupert Goold's fanciful multimedia staging of Lucy Prebble's London hit were any livelier, the actors wearing voracious debt-eating raptors masks on their heads would be dashing up the theater aisles gobbling credit-card receipts from our wallets."

Michael Sommers, NJ Newsroom: Web site down at posting time.

Jesse Oxfeld, NY Observer: "Enron, the hit London import that opened last night at the Broadhurst Theatre, is a surprising and remarkable creation: It’s a two-and-a-half-hour lecture on business history, and it’s utterly thrilling."

Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly: "Goold is too caught up in his theatrical conceit to serve the fact-based story he's trying to tell. Too often, in fact, Enron plays like 60 Minutes on acid. B–"

John Simon,  Bloomberg News: "“Enron” is at once an astonishing thrill ride through the high-flying ‘90s and a chilling precursor to everything that would follow."

Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post: " After snoozing through many well-meaning tracts about Iraq, the prospect of a play about a financial meltdown wasn't appealing. But "Enron" is a whip-smart, edge-of-your-seat ride that'd rival anything at Six Flags -- there are even raptor-headed businessmen prancing around."

Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News: "Like the Texas corporation that posted big revenues in the 1990s without having assets, "Enron" is heavy on sizzle, light on steak."

Richard Dunham, Hartford Courant: "The characters, superbly acted and ably directed, don't evolve very much during two-plus hours onstage. We learn a lot more about a corrupted company and America at the turn of the millennium than we do about the demons driving its main characters."

Marilyn Stasio, Variety: " Industry doomsayers were all wet about "Enron." This London bombshell is both a dazzling piece of entertainment and a gripping cautionary tale about the criminal chicanery that eviscerated the most respected corporate body in America. Still, it cost a bundle (a reputed $5 million) to haul this hi-tech show into town, and everyone's wondering if starstruck musical junkies will part with their coin for a straight play. What's clear is that the sensational stage effects deliver the same blood-pumping thrills of a musical, wrapped around a play, by Lucy Prebble, with more brains in its head than any tuner since "Assassins.""