THEATRE TALK: Enron - Dead On Broadway, Thriving In The UK

Enron fails to impress States-side

While about a very American phenomenon, financial collapse play Enron, product of Lucy Prebble's slightly warped imagination, has proven a real hit in the West End. First building strength through a series of Chichester performances before moving to the Royal Court and now at the Noel Coward theatre, it's pretty much selling out nightly, has announced a second extension, taking it into mid-August at present, and is also about to embark on a nationwide tour. The Brits (and American tourists) clearly adore it.

However, unfortunately Prebble and director Rupert Goold appear to have mightily misjudged the US market. As with many shows this season - The Pride, Red - they took a gamble and sent it to the States, but the Americans either weren't ready to hear about their own shortcomings, or they saw flaws in the play that the UK audiences haven't yet discovered. Certainly the New York Times' Ben Brantley, master of the scathing review, didn't think much of it, and while a bad review from the Times isn't necessarily a death-knell for a show, it certainly doesn't bode well. So, only a few performances after opening, Enron is shuttering, depriving Marin Mazzie and Norbert Leo Butz of a job for the foreseeable.

It does seem odd that, especially since most other West End-to-Broadway transfers are selling well and proving popular (the Broadway transfer of La Cage, for instance, or The Pride) with audiences, that Enron has not managed to sustain itself for more than a week or so. It also makes you think about what might happen when the much-lauded Jerusalem, which saw people camping out overnight for tickets, heads for the Great White Way. Will its time here be enough to keep it afloat? Was Enron simply a rush job for an audience who didn't want to know the finer details? We'll see...

Going ape for Gavin Creel

I headed over to see Gavin Creel's first London show on Tuesday night at Ronnie Scott's. Although the show itself was wonderful, sadly the scenes outside beforehand were not. You have to wonder whether the staff had known anything about how popular this gig was going to end up being. While West End performers often attract good numbers to their shows, they're usually more intimate affairs. 300 people RSVPed 'yes' to Gavin's gig on Facebook, and that's aside from the Hair family and Gavin's own personal guestlist (including Legally Blonde's Alex Gaumond and former Maria Summer Strallen, whose sister Scarlett starred with Creel in Mary Poppins). With a capacity of about 130 standing (as far as I know) it was clear from the outset that not everyone would get in.

After half the queue was cleared to the other side of the club by a man unhappy about his shop's business being obscured, things got a little bit messy, and the queue turned into more of a semicircle of show people and sundry others crammed around the door waiting to get in. As it turned out, the gig started half an hour late (at midnight, oy!) due to these problems, but also because Gavin was kind enough to pop outside and give those who hadn't been able to get in a little impromptu show of their own. Fingers crossed these issues are resolved - and a bigger space is found - by the time of Gavin's next show. He really is a fantastic and charismatic performer. This was a lovely night that everyone deserved to have been at. Next time, eh?

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