Power Plays

Theater has always been concerned with the high and mighty. From the ancient Greeks to this minute, part of the power of those wielding power was the ability to mesmerize us less exalted. In theater, attention is commonly focused on how the high and mighty have fallen and the lessons derived from the plummet — not to mention the satisfaction gained watching the privileged suffering from their corrupted and corrupting behavior.

The prime example of this sort of play right now is Lucy Prebble’s much-talked-about
Enron, which has arrived at the Royal Court after an acclaimed run in Chichester and which is already booking seats for a transfer to the West End (with a Broadway run starting this coming April). And there’s no mystery why the chatterati are agog. The comedy-drama is an exhilarating production, especially as guided with the confidence of a cruise-line social director by Rupert Goold.

The work follows the shameful scandal that monopolized headlines at the turn of the 21st Century and which was expected to change more corporate practices than may have actually occurred by now. On a set hung with 16 columnar lighting fixtures that rise and fall and change colors (often into red, white, and blue) and enhanced by Jon Driscoll’s projections, the play keeps the facts of the Enron case flowing in increasingly chilling chronological order. At the same time, Prebble juggles the facts with various theatrical surprises like occasionally having three tall blind mice in business suits tap their long canes through the proceedings.

The result is a satire that includes song-and-dance as a frequent jubilant element and turns the excoriation of now-jailed or deceased Enron executives Jeffrey Skilling (Samuel West), Andy Fastow (Tom Goodman-Hill), and Kenneth Lay (Tim Pigott-Smith) into a Brechtian fantasy. Much of the non-stop razzle-dazzle may be dictated by the need to explain the financial shenanigans Skilling and Fastow were up to, with Lay’s tacit encouragement. For instance, getting the layperson to understand the “mark-to-market” accounting concept requires fancy verbiage and visual aids, which Goold and creative team copiously supply.

Ultimately, there’s less to Enron than meets the eye, but it may mean little to wide-eyed spectators that the script carries virtually no emotional heft. Only a few briefly-seen employees whose futures are wiped out by upper-echelon lying reap compassion. Although Skilling — depicted as a genius whose tragic flaw is condoning bookkeeping hoo-ha — has a daughter whom he cares about, he’s hardly sympathetic. He only buys a modicum of tolerance with a speech just before curtain about societal and economic progress as a mitigating ingredient in stock-market bubbles, and the slick West delivers it with appeal.

On the other hand, Lay is presented as a one-dimensional grinning mogul, something Pigott-Smith has great fun with. Fastow is presented as a two-dimensional bumbler with a gift for debt-dodging schemes, and Goodman-Hill throws himself into that. As the fictional Claudia Roe, a bright woman who nonetheless finds it useful to sleep her way to the top, Amanda Drew approaches three dimensions but disappears two-thirds of the way through. Still, despite its flaws, Enron is unmissable.

Power destroying itself from within is a common Shakespearean theme, and one he tackled to heartbreaking effect in Othello, which is getting a surprisingly effective interpretation at Trafalgar Studios with large-scale, booming voiced comic Lenny Henry as the Moor. The production is directed by Barrie Rutter, who blends a traditional attack with his rough-hewn Yorkshire background. Conrad Nelson’s brilliant turn as Iago is the embodiment of forces that too often and too thoroughly warp power irreversibly.

Over at the Bush, Jack Thorne is examining how human elements compromise English politics in 2nd May 1997 — which is the date the Labor government returned to power under Tony Blair and the Thatcher-Major years were stopped in their screeching tracks. While the concept sounds promising, Thorne mitigates the promise by scrutinizing the significant event obliquely.

He zooms in on three separate scenes, involving three couples. The first scene is the most pertinent. Robert (Geoffrey Beevers), a relatively high-ranking Tory cipher, is reassessing a life he believes has added up to nothing, while wife Marie (Linda Broughton) tries to boost his morale and, when necessary, provide him with oxygen from a bedside tank. (The prop is a painfully obvious symbol of party decline.) In the second scene, abashed Liberal Democrat bloke Ian (Hugh Skinner) has brought home lanky, inebriated party girl Sarah (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) after an election blow-out. He has to fend off her advances even after she realizes she intended to go home with a different lad. In the third segment, incipient Labor party members and school chums Jake (James Barrett) and Will (Jamie Samuel) have slept in the same bed more innocently than Will would have liked after the happy results have been announced. The suspense here derives from Will trying awkwardly and failing to put the moves on Jake. What light any of this throws on the memorable day is minimal — and a decided let-down for anyone seeking edification on England’s past and current political quagmire.

Writing in Germany during the Third Reich, Odon von Horvath also chose an oblique angle by which to lambaste Hitler and the Nazis in Judgment Day, now at the Almeida and being presented in a stark translation by Christopher Hampton. Here, the playwright lets married small-town train signalman Thomas Hudetz (Joseph Millson) allow himself to be distracted from duty during a clandestine meeting with Anna (Laura Donnelly). The result is a fatal train crash for which Hudetz is tried. To clear himself, he claims he pulled the switch in timely fashion and prevails on Anna to corroborate a tale that his wife, Frau Hudetz (Suzanne Burden), who witnessed the entire episode, knows is untrue.

There’s no missing that von Horvath has written an allegory about his homeland and how — through a population’s short-sightedness and self-absorption — the Fuhrer was enabled to take devastating control. The dramatist’s attitude towards the malleable local folk — particularly opinionated gossip Frau Leimgruber (Sarah Woodward) — is dark and troubled and lends the play disturbing weight. However, there’s a problem with director James MacDonald being overly impressed with putting an allegory on Miriam Buether’s slowly revolving stark set. MacDonald calls such deliberate attention to the importance of what he’s doing that it has the opposite effect of nearly undermining it.