Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Enron | A Theatrical Interpretation


Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

Honestly Lay Bare has been writing these missives since 2004 but today - 6 years on - is the first time that we have written a theatre review.

But this - as you may have imagined - is no ordinary theatre review.

Friday last after a week working in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Honestly Lay Bare took themselves off to see the play "Enron" at the Noel Coward Theatre in the West End (yes Honestly Lay Bare does have a cultural side!).

Not surprisingly - although it was to the elderly couple sitted behind Honestly Lay Bare who at the end of the production accused it of being a documentary - "Enron" shows how the Texan energy giant moved from a model of the future to a bankrupt disaster with debts of $38bn.

Prime mover is Jeffrey Skilling: a classic over-reacher who boldly announces "we're not just an energy company, we're a powerhouse for ideas".

As any student of accounting will now know his basic idea was to trade in energy as well as supply it. But, as his dreams expand to include video, internet and even the weather, the gap between stockmarket perception and reality grows ever greater.

As profits failed to materialise, Skilling turned to his sidekick, Andy Fastow, to create shadow companies to conceal mounting debts. Once the market lost confidence, however, Skilling's schemes are revealed for what they are: a fraudulent fantasy.

It could all be dry as dust.

But it wasn't. It was a wonderful explanation of one of the more fascinating times in modern business history.

Not to give too much away ... but having said that we will ... there is a wonderful scence where scene where Fastow explains his system for funnelling Enron's debts into shadow companies (who will ever forget the LJMs!).

Even financially challenged auditors can follow this as Fastow shows boxes encasing ever smaller boxes lit by a flickering red light symbolising the basic investment.

This is Enron exposed as con-trick and illusion.

But the triumph of the play is that it renders Enron's rise and fall in exciting theatrical terms, and leaves you with the feeling that - even with the subsequent impact of the global financial crisis - the lessons of this vast collapse have still to be learned.

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