Enron and Artichokes

I have, unsur­pris­ing­ly, not much of a head for busi­ness. When John talks about sub­prime mort­gages, TALF, TARPS and what not, I try hard to pay atten­tion, not to retreat into mak­ing silent gro­cery lists or won­der­ing how to fil­let a sea bream.

So when my good friend Dari­na rang us up to see if we would like to join them at “Enron,” I quailed a bit. I know that it’s the hottest tick­et in town. I even tried, with the best of inten­tions, to get tick­ets last autumn when the play was at the Roy­al Court. Was­n’t too dev­as­tat­ed when it was sold-out. A the­atri­cal ren­di­tion of the col­lapse of an oil and gas com­pa­ny in Texas?

But I could­n’t in good con­science not go, when tick­ets were being waved in my face. So we said yes, to go last night.

“It’s a musi­cal, isn’t it?” John asked yes­ter­day after­noon as yet anoth­er grey rain­storm swept by the study win­dow. (At least the heat is back on.)

“It most cer­tain­ly is NOT a musi­cal,” I scoffed. “Just because it turned out that the life of Sir Fran­cis Drake could be set to music and dance for 13-year-olds, does not mean that the tale of the down­fall of a double‑A Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tion is a musi­cal. Cer­tain­ly not.”

It’s a musical.

Well, it was intend­ed as such by Lucy Preb­bles, its 24-year-old female play­wright, but appar­ent­ly the pow­ers-that-be who fund­ed her unlike­ly project scaled down the singing bits some­what. But it’s true that at times the office work­ers break into song and dance, bran­dish­ing light sticks, spin­ning around on their ergonom­ic office chairs, you name it.

And some­how, it’s magnificent.

It helped that John and my friend’s hus­band are long­time inhab­i­tants of the cor­po­rate-bank­ing world. It was amus­ing and sweet to lis­ten to them at the inter­val, debat­ing the verac­i­ty of the stock prices on the the­atri­cal tick­er tape. “Intel was DEF­I­NITE­LY high­er in 2000, that’s total­ly wrong…” The things these boys take seriously.

How many things about this pro­duc­tion were won­der­ful. First, the greedy CEO Jef­frey Skilling, with a father­ly heart of gold, who teach­es his lit­tle girl how long it would take to count to a bil­lion (32 years) by count­ing out dol­lar bills, played by the deli­cious Sam West. West plays him sexy in a ruth­less, creepy way, seduc­tive­ly mega­lo­ma­ni­ac, rev­el­ling in the smoke-and-mir­rors’ machi­na­tions of Andrew Fas­tow, his CFO, played with almost drunk­en delight by Tom Good­man-Hill. Then there’s the Chair­man Ken Lay him­self, played by a sort of car­toon­ish­ly Tex­any Tim Pig­ott-Smith. I do think it’s a lit­tle lazy of British actors to lay on a South­ern accent so thick­ly, because it means that the pres­sure of a real, believ­able Amer­i­can accent is off, in favor of cliche. We adored him in ‘My Fair Lady,’ so I was thrilled to see him again live.

How a 24-year-old British woman became inter­est­ed enough in Enron to write a play about its down­fall eludes me. Fur­ther, it’s a mas­sive feat to make it a musi­cal com­e­dy! I can­not imag­ine how Preb­bles was able to turn a very basic sto­ry of cor­po­rate greed and excess into a sto­ry of three very intrigu­ing def­i­nite per­son­al­i­ties (the female exec­u­tive, Clau­dia Roe, played by Aman­da Drew) who rounds out the four main play­ers was not so inter­est­ing to me, being played I thought too broad­ly as a bitchy, aggres­sive sexpot).

There are so many delights! The Lehman Broth­ers, played as suit and tie-shar­ing Siamese twins! The dinosaur-head­ed “Rap­tors” who gob­ble dol­lar bills, the lit­tle daugh­ter who sits in a pile of regur­gi­tat­ed, shred­ded cor­po­rate paper and asks her dad­dy how the world works. But best of all to me, with my well-known fear of fly­ing, was Skilling’s expla­na­tion of how debt-laden cor­po­rate struc­tures fall apart. I paraphrase:

“It’s not like fly­ing in an air­plane. It does­n’t mat­ter if you know how the air­plane works, and it does­n’t mat­ter if you believe it will work. Even if all the pas­sen­gers in the air­plane decid­ed it was­n’t going to stay in the air, the air­plane stays in the sky. But… if the cor­po­rate world decides it does­n’t believe in debt structure…”

And a tremen­dous sound of air­plane engines over­whelms the the­atre, and a bril­liant, abstract­ed vision of the ruined World Trade Cen­ter appears.

I won’t spoil the dra­ma for you, but the ties Preb­ble draws between Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, the unbe­liev­able mag­ic of fly­ing, and the unbe­liev­able prof­itabil­i­ty of a Ponzi scheme, as long as every­one believes in it… well, it’s the stuff that makes the Wiz­ard of Oz, Harold Hill, Bernie Mad­off, and the UK MP expens­es scan­dal all WORK. Until some­one decides to look behind the curtain.

Amaz­ing! And I learned a great deal. I described the expe­ri­ence to Avery as a com­bi­na­tion of “The Way We Live Now” and “Legal­ly Blonde: the Musi­cal.” If that’s not an induce­ment to queue for a tick­et, I don’t know what is. She asked if the failed cor­po­rate raiders walked around say­ing, “Oh my God, oh my God, you guys.”

Now then, as night fol­lows the day, onto arti­chokes. I have been haunt­ed by the beau­ty of the sal­ad I had in Venice, and I have suc­cess­ful­ly recre­at­ed it here! And so can you. Prepar­ing arti­chokes always makes me won­der how des­per­ate must have been the first per­son to want to eat them. They’re intu­itive­ly very off-putting: prick­ly and dif­fi­cult. But so satisfying.

Car­ciofi Cru­di con Scampi
(serves 4 as a starter, or 2 as a light lunch)

2 globe artichokes
juice of 1 lemon
1 cup cray­fish tails
2 tsps gar­lic-infused olive oil (or plain oil and a minced clove of garlic)
juice of 1 fur­ther lemon, maybe more
sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

Cut off the stem of the arti­choke where it’s woody, and peel the out­er lay­er from the rest of the stem with a pota­to peel­er, then cut off the top sort of third of the arti­choke. This is because the top and out­er leaves are tough and inedible.

Peel away near­ly all the out­er leaves, until very pale and ten­der ones are left. Then with a sharp tea­spoon, dig in the cen­ter of the arti­choke and care­ful­ly scoop out all the inner leaves and the fur­ry, hairy bits of choke inside them. Err on the side of remov­ing too many inner leaves, rather than leav­ing behind any choke, which is inedible.

Imme­di­ate­ly plunge the arti­chokes in lemon water, to pre­vent them turn­ing brown.

When you are ready to serve your sal­ad, remove the arti­chokes one at a time, shake off the water, and slice PAPER thin, as thin as you can man­age. As soon as you fin­ish slic­ing an arti­choke, place in a medi­um-sized bowl and sprin­kle with lemon juice, toss to mix. Move onto the next arti­choke and repeat, adding more lemon juice and toss­ing again.

Mix the cray­fish tails with the arti­chokes and sprin­kle over the olive oil, lemon juice to taste, and sea­son well. Mix well and to serve, pile in the cen­ter of the plate as high as you can. Perfect.

******************

The but­tery, briny rich­ness of the cray­fish and their soft­ness go per­fect­ly with the gen­tle bite of the arti­choke. I decid­ed to go with the gar­lic-infused oil rather than sim­ple oil and minced gar­lic, just because I want­ed to be able to taste ful­ly the del­i­cate arti­chokes. Next time, I might use chilli oil, or even sprin­kle a few chilli flakes over the top of the sal­ad. With a grilled chop or fil­let of fish, sprin­kled lib­er­al­ly with flat-leaf pars­ley, you’ll have the per­fect dinner.

Well, believe it or not, I’m off to deliv­er a love­ly warm banana and apple spice cake to my erst­while ten­nis instruc­tor, the cologne-emit­ting but very tal­ent­ed Roc­co. In return for this, he has offered a free les­son, and I’m begin­ning to think I’m ready to learn to serve prop­er­ly. I have end-of-win­ter body and since I don’t plan to eat less, I’d bet­ter exer­cise more. And how many calo­ries can there be in an artichoke?