Miriam Zendle talks to the director of Enron...
How are you feeling? Are you floating a bit at the moment?
I am! I'm quite nervous because I fly to Broadway tomorrow, so I've got to work on the Broadway production. We had to make sure we deliver as exciting a show in America as we do here. We feel a big responsibility about that, but we feel very positive about the fact we've got a great piece of theatre that everyone will come and see.
How do you think the Americans will take to this very American story?
Well, we've got an amazing American cast, full of proper Broadway stars. Norbert Leo Butz, Marin Mazzie - these are stage animals. I don't see it as an English show going over to Broadway, I see it as an American show that we have constructed or presided over, but being delivered by an American cast, and they will find their own way of doing it. I really look forward to that. I think it's basically, I watch tonight and I think the real buzz and thrill in theatre is seeing a great musical. Now, we tried to make a play that was also a musical and that had that energy.
Not just a play-slash-musical, but one complete with light sabers, velociraptors... which all just came out of the mind of Lucy Prebble [playwright]!
Yes! Basically the story's about an accountancy scandal, so you throw in big ideas, big character journeys but also big visual pleasure.
Was that part of what made you want to take it on, because it's so many different things?
I think I wanted to take it on because I knew we needed to say something about the world, about the financial situation we're in, about the way capitalism is working within the current climate, but also because there was a real huge personal big American tragedy. Everyone in Britain - of course we have a big theatre tradition, we have Shakespeare, we have Wilde, we have all those writers, but we look at Miller and Williams and O'Neill in a different way. The idea that you put a man on the wheel, on the rack, like in Salesman, or Long Day, and that's great drama. I think Lucy and all of us wanted to say there's a story in this, it doesn't matter about velociraptors or accounting, it's a story of a man, a Macbeth-like story.
How long will you be working out on Broadway and what do you plan to see while out there?
I will be out there for six-eight weeks. I saw some of the British plays while over here, so I want to see American shows!
