HEADLONG

The English-born multimedia docudrama Enron, about the rise and crash of the Texas energy-trading behemoth, smelled strongly of what I called “transatlantic schadenfreude” in a review of another import: a topical satire in which Brits laugh up their sleeves at greedy, gullible American rubes. I was able to hedge my low expectations with my tremendous respect for director Rupert Goold and my boundless admiration for musical-comedy trouper Norbert Leo Butz, who portrays Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. What a surprise, then, to discover that Lucy Prebble’s multilayered play is not your typical Yank-bashing, but a darkly exhilarating portrait of hypertrophied capitalism and a society that allows faith-based fiscal systems to ravage the body economic. Drawing from a deep bag of theatrical tricks and riffling through found text, news videos and observed gestures, Prebble and Goold supply Broadway theatergoers with the sort of play they demand—A sharp-witted and rollicking business thriller to dazzle the eye and tickle the brain. If Enron’s stock were still circling the ticker, my advice would be to buy, buy, buy.

Such enthusiasm may seem a tad overzealous, which makes sense since Enron is more about religion than money. Or rather, it’s about how the two become conflated, separated from any moral standard. In Prebble’s evocative rendition, Skilling emerges as the tale’s Antichrist—or at the very least, a charismatic holy fool. The New Testament according to Skilling? A corporation doesn’t need hard assets or products to be a success; it need only cultivate the aura of profitability to drive up the stock price. Keep the money moving and you can inflate your profile into the billions.

Mark-to-market accounting (claiming the money you expect to make as profit in the bank) is one pillar of Skilling’s new theology. Joining forces with ace number-cruncher Andy Fastow (Kunken), Skilling plots to keep Enron’s losses off the books. He and Fastow hatch a series of debt shelters, or special purpose entities, which Fastow nicknames “Raptors.” Goold literalizes the joke, dressing four actors in scary dinosaur heads. Down in his basement laboratory, Fastow feeds the beasts on his company’s mushrooming debt. In the upper corporate levels, Enron’s president, Kenneth Lay (Itzin), and fellow executive Claudia Roe (Mazzie) turn a blind eye to the rot underneath. So do Enron’s accountants at Arthur Andersen and other industry watchdogs. Sheer faith keeps the whole scam afloat. If capitalism is a religion, then Skilling is the pope and God is dead.

As you can guess, Goold and Prebble tell their epic not only through naturalistic office scenes but also dance, allegorical fantasy and sensory-buzzing vignettes of light and sound. Board members costumed as three blind mice tap around the stage with canes. During the 2001 California energy crisis, Enron’s shock troops twirl lightsabers. Often the stage is bathed in the whooshing, multicolored lights of the New York Stock Exchange’s electronic ticker.

But there is more to the production than eye candy: Prebble’s characters are deliciously vital and self-aware, especially as played by Butz and Kunken. The American huckster and the innovator are classic types, both products of our national tendency to create new religions or systems of social organization. Butz’s mix of self-loathing and arrogance, his transformation from pudgy schlub to sharkish Master of the Universe, is both repellent and deeply amusing. You root for him to succeed—then realize what a disaster that will be. “I’m not a bad man. I’m not an unusual man,” the imprisoned Skilling declares in a soliloquy that Iago would approve. The fallen corporate villain undersells himself. He helped build a fiendishly complex accounting scam that cost shareholders billions and robbed 22,000 employees of employment and savings. But here’s the deeply interesting thing about Enron, especially in its disquieting final moments: Skilling makes the case that we’re all in it together. All progress has taken place in a bubble, on the financial graph of human history. We take out subprime mortgages, we swipe our plastic, we consume blithely, not caring about tomorrow or the value of what we trade and ingest. I’d even bet that Goold and Prebble admire Skilling and Fastow. Sleazy, greedy, foolish and tacky they might have been, but those venal bastards were storytellers, showmen par excellence. And wouldn’t we rather be entertained than made to feel responsible for our wasteful, interdependent lives?

New York - With Goldman Sachs executives answering to a Senate committee this week, the latest round of financial wizards under fire after being accused of corrupt practices, perhaps the Enron scandal of 2001 seems like yesterday's news.

Not so, argues the young British writer Lucy Prebble. In Enron, her intellectually challenging, exuberantly entertaining new play, Prebble makes the case that the disgraced energy company's abuses and collapse were both a harbinger of future debacles and a reflection of long-standing, deep-rooted social and human frailties.

This isn't achieved through mockery. Enron - which earned rave reviews in London before transferring to the Broadhurst Theatre, where it opened Tuesday - doesn't revel in the kind of trans-Atlantic snark that defined, say, Jerry Springer: The Opera, another celebrated, U.K.-based production.

Director Rupert Goold and his team of sound and visual designers do indulge Prebble's genre-bending, multimedia vision - the play incorporates video clips, high-tech images and costumes and electronically enhanced musical vignettes - with winking references to American excess. Enron employees are shown working and playing with a John Calvin-meets-MTV ferocity; in one party scene, they don cowboy hats and wave flags as hard-rock tunes blare.

But Enron's agenda isn't simply to send up Yankee bombast or corporate culture. If anything, Prebble and Goold illustrate the seductiveness of fast living in the material world, as well as its harrowing consequences. They're abetted by an expert cast led by Norbert Leo Butz, giving a blazing performance as Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

In Butz's interpretation, Skilling evolves with eerie authenticity from a cranky wonder-nerd into a smooth, ruthless power player. The actor never lets us lose sight of the character's beguiling intelligence, though, or the enduring insecurities that inform his ruin as much as foul play. If his Skilling isn't quite sympathetic, he is far too human to dismiss as a boogeyman, and thus more unsettling.

Butz has fine partners in Gregory Itzin, who as Enron chairman Kenneth Lay combines folksy charm, befuddlement and menace, and Marin Mazzie, stylish and witty as a hard-boiled vice president based on several women at the company. Stephen Kunken's eager, unctuous take on CFO Andy Fastow is especially bracing, and some of the funniest and most disturbing scenes unfold in Fastow's dungeon-like "lair," where reptilian creatures gorge on dollar bills representing ever-expanding debt.

Of course, the events documented here are no laughing matter. If there are no real heroes in Enron - not the scheming suits, not the inept politicians who empower them - there are certainly victims. Toward the end, a few minor characters stand in for the lowlier Enron workers who lost their savings and dreams.

That Prebble and her collaborators can fold the pain and shame of this into a fresh, exhilarating experience is one of the season's more pleasant surprises.