Taylorian

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Enron

F irst as is the custom these days a trigger warning. ,f you are an executiYe or a corporate lawyer or are inYolYed in business in any way please looN away now. Just over a year ago, Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, a biotechnology company once valued at $9 billion, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud. Holmes had been a Silicon Valley superstar and one of America’s richest women until it all came crashing down. One year on, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur, Sam Bankman Fried – who, like Holmes, was once the beloved of the powerful, and whose FTX company was valued even higher than Theranos – was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Before Holmes and Bankman-Fried there was Jeffrey Skilling and Enron, whose story is told

by twenty-four accomplished performers at the Merchant Taylors’ Drama Studio in what is possibly its most ambitious production to date. To those of us old enough to remember, Enron was huge: for four glorious years it burned brightly (it was an energy company), before it collapsed, losing its shareholders $74 billion, according to Investopedia. It was the world’s biggest corporate bankruptcy, until the likes of Lehman Brothers – who have a delightful cameo in the form of Fred Butler and Ed Ault – perished in the 2008 financial crisis. Enron may have been a failed energy conglomerate, but these players are so full of vim and vigour they could have powered the National Grid. Savio Gimmi’s inspired set and his talented technical team – Zachary Scott, Thomas Baldwin, Lu’ay Ben Alaya, Charlie Jolliff, Aaron Scott, Samuel Harwood – have outdone themselves in a