Socialist Plays Jeff Skilling In New Play

I admit, I am still not sure if this is an April Fools joke or not.

We’re still awaiting Fred the Shred – the Movie but one of the villains who gave capitalism a bad name is about to receive his comeuppance on the London stage. “I am going to play Jeff Skilling, the disgraced Enron boss, in a new play at the Royal Court,” the actor Samuel West tells us.

Skilling, the former Enron president, is serving a 24-year jail term for his role in the collapse of the energy trading giant. Enron is written by the award-winning Lucy Prebble and directed by Rupert Goold, who staged the latest Oliver! revival. The play mixes “classical tragedy with savage comedy”, following “a group of flawed men and women in a narrative of greed and loss”.

Skilling, who was found guilty of 19 fraud charges in 2006, will be resentenced in July and could be let out early. As an ex-Socialist Workers Party member, West, who played Ted Heath in the BBC’s Long Walk To Finchley Thatcher drama, is unlikely to let Skilling off the hook.

Whatever.