Enron at Mill Theatre

Enron by Lucy Prebble (UK).  Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Fyshwick, Canberra July 31 – August 9, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 31

CREATIVES & COMPANY

Cast
Jeffrey Skilling: Jay James Moody; Andy Fastow: Oliver Bailey
Jen (gender changed from Ken) Lay and Ensemble: Andrea Close
Claudia Roe and Ensemble: Lexi Sekuless
Ensemble: Rhys Hekimian, Timmy Sekuless, Alana Denham-Preston

Production Team
Direction for this production was completed by the production team and our rehearsal support team. 
Writer: Lucy Prebble
Set Designer: Soham Apte; Costume Designer: Caitlin Hodder
Lighting Designer: Andrew Snell; Sound Designer: Damian Ashcroft
Production Stage Manager: Chips Jin
Assistant Stage Managers: Paige Macdonald and Bea Grant
Contingencies and Rehearsal Support: Rachel Howard, Jen Noveski, Kate Blackhurst, Heidi Silberman, Maxine Beaumont, Goldele Rayment, PJ Williams
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena
Publicity images: Andrea Close, Rhys Hekimian, Steph Roberts

Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions; Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs
Special thanks to Molonglo,  Mojo Guitars and PJ Williams

L to R: Jay James Moody as Jeffrey Skilling; Andrea Close as Jen Lay
Oliver Bailey as Andy Fastow; Lexi Sekuless as Claudia Roe
The Party Scene in Enron by Lucy Prebble
Mill Theatre, Canberra 2025

Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy) in 1867 that Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction.  

Lexi Sekuless and The Mill team’s brilliant production of Enron by British playwright Lucy Prebble proves the point 150 years later, in this quite extraordinary satire of the “spectacular rise and notorious fall of the American energy giant Enron and its founding partners Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling”, as Sydney’s New Theatre described it in the Australian premiere in 2013.

Company Secretary Jen Lay in charge.  Ideas man Andy Fastow in background.

Andy Fastow explaining phantom investment system.

Claudia Roe working on company owner Jeffrey Skilling (out of shot)

The Mill, in politically diplomatic Canberra, may not see itself quite like the New Theatre which “was set up in 1932 as the Sydney Workers Art Club, opening with the slogan ‘Art is a Weapon’”, but when you’ve seen this Enron, which you must because it has such a clever design and terrific acting, you should look up Steve Evans’ amazing article in the Canberra Times today as I write (Thursday July 31, 2025 Page 4) headlined Star-spangled soiree where diplomacy’s done to a ‘T’, about the “unmentionable spectre [Mr T] at the magnificent party thrown at the American embassy…[where the] fireworks and herds of brisket and pork-belly barbecue were in celebration of American independence from the British”.

You’ll see a party rather like this - minus the barbecue - on the Mill Theatre stage – with every nuance of underhand meaning similar to Evans’ reporting: “But mentioning the T word [to Meta’s representative] felt a bit like passing wind in church – just not done”.  My point is that though this play was written by a British woman playwright in 2009, it foreshadows America’s progress to today’s President T.  The satire is telling – exciting to watch, especially in close-up in the tiny Mill Theatre; but the truth it reveals is frightening as much as it is illuminating.

It’s important, too, that we have a theatre company in Canberra presenting us, including our national public servants and politicians, with the confronting conclusion – that by not regulating the financial market, especially the use of phantom investment companies, we are all guilty of setting up exactly what Karl Marx predicted.

Yet, as Jeffrey Skilling believed even after years in jail, performed with real sincerity by Jay James Moody, he had never intended to cause economic breakdown: he was merely trying to “change the world” for the better.  Though dangerous climate warming is not mentioned in this play, it has been technical innovation and developments in financial markets – over the past few thousand years – aimed at expanding economic activity and improving people’s incomes,  and the inevitable profiteering, which is now threatening us with worse even than Karl Marx imagined.  Some say not just economic chaos and warfare, but the self-destruction of our species.

 Ironically in the play, Andy Fastow makes a big point of the 'Darwinian evolution' of modern business.  

Lexi Sekuless, in presenting this play and so artfully performing it (herself included) in a wonderful tightly directed small team (New Theatre used 15 actors), must be recognised for both the quality and the importance of her work.

Please don’t miss Enron at the Mill Theatre.

 P.S. The fictional character in Prebble’s play, Claudia Roe, appears to have been based on the true woman involved in Enron’s history: Rebecca Mark.  
See https://commongroundolivia.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-real-claudia-roe.html 

Frank McKone's reviews are also accessible at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com 

The Vanishing Arts: What the Destruction of the Arts Means to Society, by Rob J Kennedy

 

ANU Kambri Precinct. Photo Florian Groehn 

Before anyone removes anything, they need to understand why it was there in the first place.

This principle is called Chesterton’s Fence. Every university, media outlet, and government should be required to apply this fundamental process before making any cuts.

What began as quiet “restructuring” has become an avalanche of destruction. Arts and humanities faculties are being dismantled at universities like the Australian National University, Macquarie University, and the University of Tasmania. Departments once devoted to philosophy, art history, literature, and music are replaced with fragmented, casualised courses. The message is clear: the arts no longer matter as a body of knowledge, but only when they can be monetised.

This erosion is not trimming fat; it is dismantling the skeleton and chopping off the head of our cultural life. Arts education doesn’t just produce musicians or writers. It teaches us to think critically and see the world from multiple perspectives. It is the foundation of a healthy, democratic society.

When universities withdraw from the arts, the damage spreads. Local artists lose teaching roles and the intellectual systems that nourish their practice. Aspiring students are told that their abilities and dreams are worthless. Communities lose artists and networks. And society as a whole loses a source that not only brings people together, but one that provides a voice and substance for what the community represents.

This decline is mirrored in the media. Once, newspapers devoted space to cultural criticism, they engaged reviews and essays that treated art as a public conversation. Arts reviews got people talking outside the headlines. Today, most have slashed arts sections, replacing them with lifestyle content, celebrity news and advertising. Critics have been laid off or replaced by freelancers not trained in the arts, and in many outlets, reviews are short or gone entirely.

Criticism is not simply opinion. It is how art lives in the public sphere. It is how it is contextualised, challenged, and kept vibrant. Without it, art and social ideas risk becoming mute, reduced to disposable entertainment. A society that abandons cultural criticism is one that abandons its own capacity to reflect, question, imagine and inspire.

The effects ripple outward. Local arts communities and artists, once supported by universities and media, now operate in increasingly precarious gig economies. Without teaching posts, residencies, and reviews, their work becomes invisible. Emerging artists suffer most; without mentors, platforms, or critical ecosystems, many give up or divert their talents into private-sector roles far from the arts.

Audiences suffer too. Fewer exhibitions, fewer performances, and less diversity in creative voices. Arts festivals shrink. Theatres and music venues close. A community without visible, supported art is a community that will be lost to just another commercial system.

This is not an argument for nostalgia. The arts should not be preserved out of sentiment. They should be recognised and funded as essential infrastructure, as vital as health, science, or roads. Governments must treat cultural investment seriously, funding not just production but also reception, criticism, coverage, and education. Media outlets should reclaim their role as cultural voices rather than retreating to click-driven superficiality. After all, many people bought newspapers just for the arts section alone.

Part of what is at stake is the $65 billion Australian arts industry. But the greater loss is immeasurable: the imagination, reflection, and humanity that the arts bring into public life.

The erosion of the arts is not inevitable. It is a choice. Universities can lead in culture again. Media can invest in real criticism. Communities and governments can affirm that the arts are not luxuries but the very things that make a society a place that people want to be part of.

Let’s not wait until the arts vanish entirely, because when we realise what we have lost, it will be too late to go back.

Sublime interpretations from Ella Fitzgerald

Reviewed by Tony Magee

There are two ladies whom might be described as the two greatest singers of the 20th Century (excluding opera). Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. You can't separate them. They are equals. I don't think there is anyone who can touch them, past or present.

Recorded in 1960, The Intimate Ella is a collection of great ballads sung by Ella Fitzgerald with piano accompaniments by Paul Smith, who is one of the supreme accompanists for this kind of music. He creates a glorious cushion of sound over which floats Miss Fitzgerald's incredible, seamless, silken voice.

Ella's interpretations are timeless. She brings to each number the ultimate rendering and treatment. Lyrics suddenly mean a whole lot more. Each word is crystal clear. Each note a triumph of pitch, feeling, warmth and style.

The tracks are: Black Coffee, Angel Eyes, I Cried for You, I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Then You've Never Been Blue, I Hadn't Anyone Till You, Misty, My Melancholy Baby, September Song, One for My Baby, Who's Sorry Now, I'm Getting Sentimental Over You, Reach for Tomorrow.

These songs are all standards - classics of The Great American Songbook.

It is an album which can be played at any hour of the day or night, however I particularly enjoy it in the evenings.

The recording quality is excellent. The album is in stereo.

I highly recommend adding this outstanding album to your collection.

Spider’s Web by Agatha Christie. Directed by Ylaria Rogers. Canberra Rep. Canberra Rep Theatre. July 24 to Aug 9. Reviewed by Alanna Maclean.

Cast members of Spider's Web. Photo by Cathy Breen.

 

Spider’s Web is a Christie play sitting there in the 1950s with phones that plug into the walls.

Updating this one is going to be difficult. Canberra Rep’s lively production under director Ylaria Rogers generates some good energy but is confused when it comes to some of the necessary period atmosphere which is part of Christie’s charm.

At its centre is an earnest and honest heroine, Clarissa (Sian Harrington), the second wife of diplomat Henry (Nathan McKenna) and stepmother to the intense young  Pippa (Teresa Macguire who shares the role with Manasa Kannan). Clarissa has a tendency to fantasise rather than tell the absolute truth. She finds a dead body in their rented house and spends most of the play attempting to to explain and placate those who look for an explanation. The stories become more complex and fantastical.

Who is the murderer? Enter Inspector Lord (Leo Amadeus) and his trusty but mostly silent sidekick Constable Jones ( Sophia Bate) to interview the suspects. Choose from  her guests: stolid Hugo (Anthony Mayne) and flirtatious Jeremy (John Whinfield) or her guardian the older Sir Rowland (Terry Johnson). Then there’s the eccentric gardener Mrs Peake (Adele Lewin) and the butler Elgin (David Bennett) and the mysterious Oliver Costello (Robert Weardon).

In other words, it’s a Christie full house.

The issue with this is style. Christie’s plays are very much of their time and place. This one nestles in the early 1950s, with a tinge of  British post war privation. The mini skirt has not yet arrived. Yet Clarissa is wearing something pretty close to it and in red  and with bright blonde hair. And a copper with long hair in a pony tail would not have been allowed. Wig or haircut for the actor. There are times when trying to update a period piece struggles to work.

Nonetheless Harrington leads the cast with a cheerfully clear performance and there are delights along the way. The house’s guests are clearly delineated, young Pippa steers an interesting course between brat and normal pre-teen and Lewin’s Mrs Peake is especially funny. The set (design by Sarea Coates) does all you would expect in terms of atmosphere and secret rooms.

It’s a long evening but fans  of Christie will enjoy it.