Play offers a clear view of Enron’s murky tale

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TimeLine Theatre Company’s Chicago premiere of "Enron" features Terry Hamilton as Ken Lay, (seated front), with (standing, from left) Sean Fortunato as Andrew Fastow, Bret Tuomi as Jeffrey Skilling, and Amy Matheny as Claudia Roe. | Photo by Lara Goetsch.

Updated: January 24, 2012 9:20PM

Scandal. Greed. Corruption.

Those are some words that come to mind when you hear the name “Enron.” TimeLine Theatre Company explores the machinations that led to the collapse of that Texas energy company in 2001 with the Chicago premiere of British playwright Lucy Prebble’s “Enron.”

Actors Terry Hamilton of Deerfield and Sean Fortunato of Evanston play key figures in that scandal. Hamilton is Kenneth Lay, Enron’s chairman and CEO; Fortunato is Andrew Fastow, the company’s chief financial officer.

“Ken Lay grew up very, very poor. His father was a salesman but also a Baptist minister. I don’t think they even had running water or a toilet in the house until he was 11 years old,” Hamilton related. “He swore he was going to make a lot of money.”

There is an indication in the play that Fastow may have been bullied as a kid. Fortunato described him as “someone who feels like he has never had his due and feels like his intelligence has been overlooked mainly because he didn’t have the social skills.”

Hamilton noted that he learned a lot about the company Lay led thanks to dramaturg Maren Robinson’s exhaustive research. “It turned into this hollow shell of a company that really was smoke and mirrors. I don’t think he intended it to be that way. When Lay brought (Jeffrey) Skilling in (as president), Skilling had a lot of great ideas. He was very innovative.”

Hiding mistakes

One of Skilling’s innovations was introducing a new accounting system called Mark-to-Market. “The theory is if you have an innovative idea, you should be able to claim the estimated profits for that idea here and now,” Hamilton said. But several failed ideas plunged the company deeper and deeper into debt. That’s when Fastow figured out creative ways to hide the financial losses.

A crash was inevitable but it was the little guys who suffered — the executives came out rich.

Hamilton described Lay as “a very charming guy. His heart was in the right place in the beginning. But after a while, his attitude was, ‘I don’t care what you do. Just make us a lot of money.’”

Fortunato said that preparing for his role caused him to view the individuals “in a personal light as opposed to looking at this just as a scandal or just as the way it affected the country — which was eye-opening.”

The actor added that there is a trend, “even in film and TV, to try and find out the ‘why’ of characters that are mob bosses and serial killers and drug dealers, and all these characters that used to just be antagonists. We’re looking for the justification.” Consequently, Fortunato said he tried to look at the “Enron” principals “from that point of view. When you start to try and view them as individuals, you can find some sort of reasoning for these ridiculously awful things they did.”

Hamilton noted that Prebble’s play was a big hit in London, running for two years. “I think an outside eye can see things maybe more clearly,” he said.

Hard edges

Because the work isn’t by an American playwright, Fortunato wondered, “if it gave a certain freedom to not try and ‘round off edges.’ It’s not a gentle indictment. The four principal characters are fairly realistically played with some extraordinary things going on around them, which they set in motion.”

The show had only a month-long run on Broadway but Hamilton is confident that TimeLine’s director has cured the problems of that production. “The Broadway production was very flashy,” Hamilton said. “Rachel Rockwell really wants to concentrate on the story.”

“That’s what you’re going to see at TimeLine,” Hamilton said. “And I think that focus serves the play better.”

“The most important thing for (Rockwell) is storytelling,” Fortunato concurred. “As long as she’s passionate about the story and has a clear vision — which she does on this project — the cast is in good hands.”