Cursed Things
Enron fails as a play too: Curtain closing on Broadway show after just 15performances
The cast of "Enron"Photo by Joan Marcus
Gregory Itzin as Kenneth LayPhoto by Joan Marcus
Stephen Kunken as Andy Fastow in "Enron"Photo by Joan Marcus
Norbert Leo Butz as Jeffrey Skilling in "Enron"Photo by Joan Marcus
Enron wasn't a viable business on Broadway either.
In one of those almost too-perfect-to-believe twists, the play based on Houston's infamous failed corporate giant failed on the Great White Way too. Enron is prematurely closing on Sunday after just 15 performances and a projected loss of almost $4 million. Although it was a big hit in London, Enron will go down as one of the most expensive Broadway flops of this decade.
It turns out that some names really are poison.
Greed did in Enron, the corporation, and it's playing no small part in the doom of Enron, the production, too. Lucy Prebble's lavish (expensive) sets under Rupert Goold's direction left the show with little margin for error. Getting shut out of the ticket-pushing-vital best play category in this week's Tony Award nominations is the final blow that killed Enron.
The four Tony nods that the show received were in minor categories and weren't considered enough to build the interest required to keep a floundering show going.
“We spent a lot of advertising money on TV over recent weeks, the show was in your face everywhere, and there was just no response,” Philip J. Smith, chairman and co-chief executive officer of the Shubert Organization that put on Enron, said in an interview. “Maybe it was just too contemporary."
"You just can't keep throwing good money after bad," Smith concluded.
Look on the bright side ... at least, it didn't lose $63.4 billion.
