There are plenty of purposeful back projections in Rupert Goold’s production of Lucy Prebble’s play about America’s greatest corporate scandal, among them Clinton denying he knew Lewinsky, Greenspan warning against “irrational exuberance” in the markets and the collapse of the twin towers. But what matters is the electronic ticker tape that endlessly circles, showing the rise of the energy giant Enron’s stock from $30 (£18) or so to $80-plus, and its plunge in 2001 as earnings and assets are revealed to be largely fairy gold.

These figures are observed with glee, triumph, apprehension, then horror by Jeff Skilling, the CEO who is now serving 24 years for deceptions that included creating phoney companies, or “raptors”, in which bad debts were hidden. And it’s Samuel West’s superb playing of this role that gives the play a near-tragic feel. You shouldn’t sympathise with a man who ruined thousands, but he’s the victim of his obsession, which is to please his boss, Tim Pigott-Smith’s folksy yet ruthless Ken Lay, by keeping the stock price high. Imagine a plump school swot losing his nerdishness along with his specs as he grows in sleekness and hubris, only to end up an embattled, sobbing wreck; and you have imagined the human graph that West charts. I’m not sure I fully understand mark-to-market, the system of presenting future as present earnings when a deal is signed, but Prebble proves as skilled as the Caryl Churchill of Serious Money at communicating complex economic events. Indeed, Enron does for our era what Churchill’s play did for the 1980s, catching the lure, turbulence and brash excitement of high-voltage trade, but leaving you eager to see more traps for fat cats. After all, Madoff, too, created an illusion of riches and he, too, was once the darling of the money-mad. And the paying of unjustifiable bonuses was an issue with Enron, as it is now.

So Prebble’s play is as timely as Goold’s production is lively. Too lively? He gives a naturalistic play an expressionistic turn, introducing suited men morphed into three blind mice, raptors with dinosaur heads, Jedi knights with neon swords or, in the case of Lehman Brothers, Siamese twins in the same vast jacket. There’s even a barbershop quartet of market analysts. At times I wondered if such sexing up meant that Goold didn’t fully trust the play or his actors, who also include Amanda Drew as a sharp, bright executive who believes projects should actually have substance. If so, he was surely wrong. Enron the drama has the energy that Enron the company finally lacked. It grips — and warns.

Box office: 020-7565 5000, to Oct 31

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