Why Are We Surprised That Enron Bombed on Broadway?
Published on Friday 7th May, 4.00pm, Written by Jonathan Dudley
Transferring a West End success to Broadway is a lot like performing a heart transplant.
It can go wrong terrifyingly easily, and you have to ensure that the donor organ is compatible with its new host. Trying to transfer Enron to the US was never going to work; it was the theatrical equivalent of attempting to delicately install the heart of a home counties poet into the cholesterol-clogged chest cavity of a 25 stone plumber from Queens.
It's a little bit like this.
For all its clever use of dinosaurs and Jedis and glowing boxes, at its heart, Enron is a British interpretation of a completely American story. Remember in 2000 when Americans made a film called U-571? The one where they claimed to have captured the Enigma code machine in WW2 with the aid of Bon Jovi. Remember how cross Radio 4 were about the whole terrible business and how Tony Blair called it “an affront to British sailors”? Well I’m sure that our culturally bereft cousins across the pond feel similarly about Enron.
Not compatible
Nobody likes to see their culture satirised, nobody likes the ideals that they hold close to their heart being mocked by besuited raptors. Capitalism defines America, the country is an ever-expanding living temple to the dollar. So surely Enron was never likely to win the hearts (and Tony Award nominations) of patriotic American theatre-goers?
When Matthew Byam Shaw, the show’s producer, was discussing Enron’s failure on Broadway on Radio 4 recently he said: “Some people probably felt there was something un-American about the play,” and he went on to describe the show as “a loud, fun, rock and roll show satirising corporate America”.
Well yes, Mr Byam Shaw. I’m sure that many people in the audience did feel that a play written by an Englishwoman that openly mocked America was a little bit un-American. That’s not exactly a surprise is it? Hire me and next time you’re planning on porting something totally inappropriate over to Broadway I can give you a heads up and save you £3m.
On a more serious note, Broadway loves realism in its plays. The glitz and the men in dinosaur masks belong in musicals, as far as many Broadway critics are concerned. I guess in a land of glitz and glamour and artifice, it’s nice to have a bit of realism in your theatre and Enron just didn’t deliver that.
Perhaps the most vicious blow to Enron’s chances of success came from America’s king of critics, Ben Brantley of the New York Times. Brantley pulled no punches in his review, describing the Olivier-Award-winning play as a “flashy but laboured economics lesson”. He was quick to point out that Enron is British-born and saved the majority of his meagre praise for the “Broadway headliners” Norbert Leo Butz and Marin Mazzie.
We mustn’t hold Brantley’s review against him, I must admit that I agree with him regarding Enron’s overuse of metaphor and surreal visual imagery. What we should be questioning is not why did Enron not do well on Broadway, but what the hell it was doing there in the first place?
Wow, you’re possibly the first Brit I’ve read who gets it.
It’s not that we (I’m a New Yorker) have a problem with having our culture satiriz/sed (see: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), it’s just that the way one mock his or her own culture is different than the one mocks another culture, and it doesn’t really translate between the two. It’s very different than the reverse, which is mock your own culture and realizing that other cultures enjoy the mocking as well.
It didn’t specifically feel like a British take on our culture, but something just didn’t feel “quite right” about the treatment. This was most apparent in the 9/11 scene… a Manhattanite wouldn’t portray it in that way, so watching it portrayed in that way simply felt disconnected and trite. Especially when 9/11 has been portrayed/mentioned in dramatic works over and over again for almost a decade.
As far as the realism-loving of Broadway, I’m sad to say that I half agree with you. And the sadness comes from the fact that I agree with you at all. Yes, Broadway Plays are all too focused on realism, even in the usually-non-theatrical set designs. You’re right, and it’s sad. But it’s a trend in the producing, not in the tastes. See: Angels in America. Wildly successful, wildly praised, and quite theatrical. We found it too flashy, but it wasn’t because of a need to relegate Glitz to Musicals. If the Velociraptors and Lightsabers were as effective in Enron as the flying angels in Angels In America, and has as much depth as that latter play, nobody would have blinked at the Glitz.
But the point is, kudos Jonathan. While all of your other British colleagues found our dislike of Enron to be a good excuse to bash America’s tastes, thank God there’s actually one of you who bothered to take the time to understand why.