Lucy Prebble lives in London. Her first full-length play, The Sugar Syndrome (Royal Court Theatre, 2003), was awarded the George Devine Award and TMA Award for Best New Play in 2004. She also won the 2004 Critics Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright. Her second play, Enron (Chichester Festival Theatre and Royal Court Theatre in a joint production with Headlong Theatre, 2009), was the winner of Best New Play at the 2009 TMA Theatre Awards. The play transferred to the West End in 2010.
Enron
Lucy PrebbleMethuen Drama Published by Methuen Drama 2009 Methuen Drama, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Methuen Drama
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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www.methuendrama.com Copyright Lucy Prebble 2009 Reprinted with amendments to the text 2010, 2011 Lucy Prebble has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work eISBN: 978 1 408 19838 4 Available in the USA from Bloomsbury Academic & Professional,
175 Fifth Avenue/3rd Floor, New York, NY 10010.
www.BloomsburyAcademicUSA.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Caution All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application
for performance etc. should be made before rehearsals begin to
The Rod Hall Agency Limited, Lower Ground Floor, 7 Mallow Street, London, EC1Y 8RQ. should be made before rehearsals begin to
The Rod Hall Agency Limited, Lower Ground Floor, 7 Mallow Street, London, EC1Y 8RQ.
No performance
may be given unless a licence has been obtained. No rights in incidental music or songs contained in the work are hereby
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Though this play is inspired by the real events leading up to the Enron collapse, it should not be seen as an exact representation of events. It is the authors fiction, as changes have been made for dramatic effect. For a thorough journalistic exploration of the facts I would direct the reader to Bethany McLean and Peter Elkinds
The Smartest Guys in the Room, Loren Foxs
Enron: The Rise and Fall, Kurt Eichenwalds
Conspiracy of Fools and the website of the
Houston Chronicle among many other sources.
I would also highly recommend John Kenneth Galbraiths accounts of The Great Crash 1929 for an insight into our financial follies, and also the works of Professor Niall Ferguson. I would like to offer my great thanks to those who have taken the time to speak with me to aid my research.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw For my father.
An unreasonable man.
Enron premiered in a Headlong Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre and Royal Court production at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, on 11 July 2009. The first performance in London was at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Sloane Square, London, on 17 September 2009.
The cast was as follows: All other parts played by members of the company. Director Rupert Goold
Designer Anthony Ward
Lighting Designer Mark Henderson
Composer and Sound Designer Adam Cork
Video and Projection Designer Jon Driscoll
Choreographer Scott Ambler Enron transferred to the Nol Coward Theatre, London, on 16 January 2010, and opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on 27 April 2010, presented by Matthew Byam Shaw, Act, Caro Newling for Neal Street, Jeffrey Richards and Jeffrey Frankel. CharactersKen Lay, Enron Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Jeffrey Skilling, Enron President
Andy Fastow, Enron Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Claudia Roe, Enron executive
Skillings Daughter
Arthur Andersen, accountant
RamsayandHewitt, law firm (one male, one female)
Sheryl Sloman, analyst, Citigroup
Lawyer
Irene GantAnalysts, J.P. Morgan
Lehman Brothers
Lawyer
Reporter
Congresswoman
Security Officer
Senator
Court Officer
Police Officer
Employees/Market Traders
The Board
Press
Raptors
The eerie, mechanical sound of singing. It is the word WHY from Enron commercials.
Three suited individuals enter, finding their way with white sticks.
They have the heads of mice. Over which, the commercials voice of: Jeffrey Skilling (voice-over) Enron Online will change the market. It is creating an open, transparent marketplace that replaces the dark, blind system that existed. It is real simple. If you want to do business, you push the button. The three mice-men have wandered across the stage, feeling their way with the sticks. The three mice-men have wandered across the stage, feeling their way with the sticks.
Perhaps one turns and seems to stare at us. A single bright light sharply illuminates theLawyer. Lawyer (to us) Im a lawyer and Im one of the few who makes money in times like these. When businesses fail, when unemployment rises, marriages break down and men jump to their deaths. Somebody. The money. The money.
At times like this were exposed to how the world really works. (I could explain to you how it works but, I dont have the time and you dont have the money.) Every so often, someone comes along and tries to change that world. Can one man do that? We look at some and pray to God they cant. But, when things get desperate, we find ourselves A Great Man, look up to him and demand he change things. Hypocrites. Within every great man theres a buried risk.
The guy I know tried to change the world was the man behind the corporate crime that defined the end of the twentieth century, and cast a shadow over this one. Now as a lawyer I choose my words carefully. So when we tell you his story, you should know it could never be exactly what happened. But were gonna put it together and sell it to you as the truth. And when you look at what happened here, and everything that came afterward, that seems about right. Here, in the beating heart of the economic world: America.
In the heart of America, Texas. And in the heart of Texas, Houston. There was a company.
Contents
Scene One
MARK-TO-MARKET PARTY 1992
A party in a small office at Enron. Present are:
Employeesdrinking champagne.
Claudia Roe,
a very attractive blonde woman of forty in a short skirt, enters.
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