"ENRON". St John's College

St John's College only puts on one play a year,* but it's worth waiting for. Their resident undergraduate director Elspeth Rogers has an inspiring philosophy: everyone who auditions will get a part. This is inclusivity in action, and it means people who may never act in another play during their entire university careers will get a chance in the magnificent surroundings of the Garden Quad Theatre. Elspeth, we salute you. 

St John's has developed quite a reputation over the last two years for mounting plays about the downfall of powerful but criminal American men. Last year it was Frost/Nixon, and now we've got ENRON, Lucy Prebble's breakthrough play about the demise of the evil energy corporation and its firebrand figurehead Jeffrey Skilling. What next? An adaptation of Netflix's Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich? Please, no.

ENRON is a meticulously researched expose of the false accounting, embezzling and corporate bullying that dragged Enron from being a multi-billion-dollar corporation to a value of under a dollar a share in the early years of this century. Rogers directs with stentorian precision, holding characters still, straight, plinth-mounted and face-on to the audience as they recount, in damningly documentary style, the facts that Skilling and his Igor-like accomplice, Andrew Fastow, are at such pains to conceal.

The show has many moments of chilling drama, particularly in the second half, as Skilling's world falls apart around him and he becomes an almost Shakespearean tragic figure, like Richard the Third, railing as his friends turn against him, desperate for one piece of luck to save the day. A deregulation, a deregulation, my kingdom for a deregulation. And the stunning costume coup of the "raptors", metaphorical dinosaurs ravenously devouring evidence of the company's debts, is strangely satisfying in its sheer, Hammer Horror excess. A velociraptor in a Gucci business suit says more in one toothy grin than a page of weasel words.

Following his star turn as President Richard Nixon last year, Rohan Joshi is back in the lead role, playing President (again) Skilling. Joshi is a major talent, and theatrical productions outside the walls of St John's must be desperate for him to audition, but it looks like they can't tempt him out of his natural habitat. And Georgina Cooper, who played narrator-cum-researcher Jim Reston with such aplomb last year, returns in top form as CFO Fastow, architect of Enron's fake accounting.

What is very odd, however, is that neither Cooper nor Joshi adopt American accents for this production. We know they can do them. In fact, looking back at my review from last year, I even commented on how convincing they are. Yet this show is performed entirely in British English voices. You might think this is no big deal, but the dialogue feels so American. It's drawly, brash, suck-my-dick Wall Street banter, and in polite English brogue it sounds naked and vulnerable. Imagine Donald Trump saying, "I just grab 'em by the pussy" in the voice of King Charles, and you'll see what I mean.

The staging feels strangely muted too, as if it's been dialled back in the same way as the voices. Of course there is no need for this production to ape the original in any way. But where that had oodles of video effects, projection, wild inhuman dance and a ferocious pace, this has... less of that, and not much to replace it. The movement is occasionally frenetic, and the pace more focus than ferocious, like the Sex Pistols performing in the Bodleian Library without wanting to disturb the readers.

The pared-down style does also come with undeniable advantages. Skilling's final speech, "All humanity is here. There's Greed, there's Fear, Joy, Faith, Hope… And the greatest of these …is money" has the space to penetrate our heads and our hearts with its remorseless hubris. And Fastow's efforts to sell out his former boss in court come laden with self-doubt and recrimination. There is also a spine-tingling original score by Emmanuel de Vidal, mixing creepy barbershop quartets with unnerving scratches and haunting, distant snatches of melody. As a production, it's a genuine mixed bag. 

You may wonder what the relevance is in retelling the cautionary tale of a company that went under for putting massive fake value on non-existent assets a quarter of a century ago. Surely the world has learned from that fiasco? Surely laws now prevent such irresponsible speculation? Not quite. The day after he became President last month, Donald Trump launched his own completely fictional crypto-currency, World Liberty Financial. Its only reality is the dimly-perceived value it has from one buyer to another. Could someone please summon the raptors? 

*This may be about to change. You heard it here first.