Mark-To-Market Stars On London Stage

Enron, a musical about the failed Texas energy trading company, has been an incredible success in London and has already taken more than £1 million ($1.62 million) in advance bookings.

The play captures the euphoria of the boom times and juxtaposes them with the collapse of the company. It shows how Jeffrey Skilling turns an old, quaint company into a place driven by ideas. He has the audience cheering his success. “America doesn’t have natural resources any more,” Skilling announces in the show. “We have intellectual capital and the best of it in the world.”

The show is about the personalities. It shows how smart “the smartest guys in the room” really were. And it makes you want to be part of the Enron team.

Enron also explains, in an audience-friendly way, the central accounting scam — selling off its mounting debts to subsidiary companies owned, almost entirely, by Enron — to keep its market value high while simultaneously building up a tsunami of debt.

Reviewers praise the play’s lucidity and ability to convey complex and often arcane accounting principals and practices. As one reviewer observed, “if you don’t know what mark-to-market accounting is beforehand, you soon will.”

The show will open on Broadway in April with an all American cast.