What does one of the largest corporate scandals in American history look like when seen through the writing of a highly acclaimed young British playwright? The answer appears to be startlingly original. Enron, written by Lucy Prebble, runs at the ADC this week in a production directed by Neve Kennedy. Kennedy’s production leans into the play’s tonal dissonance, emerging as a bizarre but compelling cocktail of greed, pathos and singing accountants. The biting criticism of corporate greed is implicit throughout the play, but Enron is less an intellectually abstracted critique of the whole broken system and more a story of how that system’s operation leads to powerful delusion in individuals.

“Igiehon’s Skilling is enthrallingly repellent as the ultimate grotesquely megalomaniacal finance-bro”

Enron’s narrative is focalised on Jeff Skilling (Owen Igiehon), Enron’s CEO whose pseudo-Darwinian approach to running Enron is business at its most exploitative and unethical. As one trader says, ‘there’s something primal about it’, and Enron shows capitalism in all its ugly, red-in-tooth-and-claw truth. At the centre of the spectacle, Igiehon’s Skilling is enthrallingly repellent as the ultimate grotesquely megalomaniacal finance-bro. Quoting Richard Dawkins while running on a treadmill and giving lectures on what it means to be a man, Skilling fits very obviously into an archetype. However, Igiehon manages to make the vulnerability of the character’s decline work in the second act, his shaky physicality providing a subtle but striking contrast to the imposing figure he initially cut on the stage.

Strong performances were also given by Erin Visaya-Neville, in her ADC stage debut as Skilling’s corporate rival Claudia Roe and by Michael Olatunji, playing Skilling’s loyalist and right-hand man Andy Fastow. The ensemble also packed a heavy punch with flashlights, obnoxious yelling and frenetic movement which summoned the chaos of the trading floor to the stage. These scenes linked the play together, providing it with energetic structure which bracketed the slower but more emotionally intense dialogue and monologue which formed the bulk of the play.

Though a couple of the play’s non-naturalistic comic elements in the first half seemed to cause some tonal whiplash for the audience and disrupt the pacing, the surreal quality of them cumulatively added to the unhinged bubble of the world of Enron. Regardless, the definite anti-naturalism of the play also provided it with some of its most striking and powerful moments. The raptors were a brilliant device of symbolic storytelling; Tess Bottomley’s and Lily Kemp’s design as well as the physical performance of Mark Jones, Freya Beard and Arianna Muñoz deserve high praise. Even the surreal, zany comedy which throws the pacing off-kilter seems to be designed to be that ridiculous; why take this all so seriously, when it is so clearly comically tragic? Prebble seems to ask her audience. Though individually the moments don’t always quite land, their overall effect of placing the play in the Enron bubble rather than the real world is to be admired.

Enron is Kennedy’s first time directing a mainshow but based on what I saw last night I hope she will return to directing very soon. She has positioned a very strong central performance by Igiehon within the surreal, high stakes environment of Enron. In doing so, she has also produced one of the more technically slick opening nights I have seen this year, which is no mean feat. Enron’s bubble of success, as well as its fragility, was tangible in every performance and staging decision last night; the coherency, feeling and skill with which it was executed is highly impressive.

Enron is showing at 7:45pm in the ADC Theatre from Tue 10th – Sat 14th May