Every historian’s favourite line is that "history repeats itself".  When in 2008 the world economy went to shit – where it remains – British playwright Lucy Prebble only needed to turn back the pages of time seven years to see how it all may have happened: Enron, voted "America’s most innovative company" by Fortune magazine 6 years in a row, filed for bankruptcy in December 2001.

"Banker bashing" is all the rage in our political discourse, but this extraordinary play delves beneath the slurs against the corporate world.  We are taken through a whole story that complicates the stereotyped view of CEOs and board members as selfish and greedy.  What the characters of Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow show is that they are (also) frighteningly smart. It is their cleverness that spurs them on far more than their lust for wealth: an interesting thought for Cambridge in ‘milkround’ season.

Skilling is played quite superbly by Guy Woolf.  He is not a happy-go-lucky, testosterone fuelled stereotype – there is a highly energetic ensemble of traders for that.  At times he can be a little shifty on his feet for a man of such confidence, but his frustration at other people’s stupidity, his self-justification in providing for his daughter and his drained exhaustion when it all goes wrong are all brilliantly convincing: if the desire ever takes him, I’m sure he would have no problem acting his way into McKinsey.

Will Chappell starts off suitably nerdy as Fastow, Skilling’s right hand man, but takes his arrogance in success too far and his vindictiveness in testifying against his boss not far enough.  Genevieve Gaunt plays Claudia Roe very craftily off Quentin Beroud’s Ken Lay, who would be vastly more credible as a cigar puffing business-daddy if he was made up with an ageing technique slightly more subtle than pouring buckets of dust over his head.

The staging is pretty wacky, but in some unfathomable way it all comes together to work.  There is no way that suited men wearing dinosaur masks would ever work in any other play, ever; or that Arnold Schwarzenegger could be acceptably depicted on stage using only a light bulb and a sheet.  The ensemble wield light sabres and an employee of a credit ratings agency wears lederhosen – what would be tasteless elsewhere all feels right in this portrayal of business gone mad. The end result is a quite startling theatrical experience - hallucinogenic and subtly unnerving.

Talented director Max Upton manages to steer everything clear of slapstick, while the writing takes the credit for not slapping the audience round the face with morality.  This play makes me ask disquieted questions rather than bubble with righteous rage.  As backward as it sounds, I am now more suspicious of numbers on screens and more fond of tangible objects of value: a ticket for this play, for example.

Enron runs until Saturday at the ADC, 7.45pm