A time out of joint? Not on Broadway!

Many moons ago I met a man at theater who remarked: “I only go to happy musicals. If I want to be depressed I can stay home.” He might well have predicted the early demise of “Enron,” which deserved a better fate. The recent Broadway debut of Lucy Prebble’s cautionary tale was, it turned out, most ill-timed. We’d all just lived (are again living?) with the bottom dropping out of investments one counted on to pay for college tuition, for retirement, name your dream; Only to find we’d been defrauded by the greed of those who make their fortunes manipulating other people’s money.

I found the first hour of the musical fascinating, as I knew nothing of Enron’s empire built on air and promise beginning in the early 1990s. But its clever set soon became uncomfortably haunting with its huge revolving ticker tape as a backdrop for a band of traders, some of whom rakishly morphed into raptors intent on devouring invisible debt, and their insatiable leader, Jeffrey Skilling (Norbet Leo Butz). As company employees found themselves no longer singing Enron’s praises, but, instead, bitterly facing unemployment and bankruptcy, one longed for the musical to move headlong to its inevitable conclusion. Cutting “Enron’s” unremarkable score and choreography by a good half hour might have curbed a desire to get out into the fresh air.

“Enron’s” main characters, save for benighted founder Kenneth Lay (excellent Gregory Itzin) never became real flesh and blood villains or victims to us, despite the name cast. Whether we’ll be ready for a musical take on “Who Swam, Who Sank: the Multi-Billion Dollar Bailout of 2009” in 20 years is a question only time can answer. And only, I suspect, if such a work could be etched in the black humor or irony “Enron” lacked (save for those gobbling raptors).

The best of Broadway’s musicals