Enron tale not over till the fat lady sings

HOUSTON – Five years after Enron Corp. filed for bankruptcy, “Enron – The Musical” opened Friday in a theater here, 2 1/2 hours of toe-tapping songs immortalizing the collapse of the seventh-largest company in America.

Although the Enron debacle is a sensitive subject in a city still stinging from lost jobs and retirement savings, the show’s author, Mark Fraser, is gambling that at this point, Houstonians are ready to laugh a little. “We’re making fun of what happened, but it’s also in part a satire about greed and corruption,” he said.

The idea grew out of some comedy sketches Fraser wrote for a show at the Houston Press Club. Four years later, he had a 160-page script and a story line set to Broadway tunes.

The opening scene shows employees of the Arthur Anderson accounting firm destroying evidence while singing “The Sound of Shredding” to the tune of “The Sound of Music.” Much later, the character of Kenneth L. Lay, Enron’s late founder, sings “Get Me to the Court on Time” (“I’m getting indicted in the morning … “). An unrepentant Jeffrey K. Skilling, Enron’s one-time chief executive, asks “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Jeff Skilling?” And so on.

Fraser, who works by day as a manufacturer’s representative for a janitorial supply company, sank $25,000 into the production.

Fraser said he spent about 100 hours on “Prime Time for Skilling” (sung to “Springtime for Hitler”) to make sure that it – like the rest of the play – was historically accurate. “Not everyone in Houston knows everything about Enron,” he said. “This is something they can look at, and laugh and learn.”