Last Updated on October 10, 2024
Money, Money, Money
Powerhouse director Sam Mendes’ play The Lehman Trilogy, adapted from Stefano Massini’s epic poem by Ben Power, has become a transatlantic hit with successful runs in the USA and in the West End. The piece chronicles the 164-year history of Lehman Brothers, from its humble beginnings as a dry-goods store in Montgomery, Alabama to its dramatic collapse at the centre of the subprime loan scandal that led to the financial crash of 2008. Back at the Gillian Lynne Theatre from October 2024 through to January 2025, we went along to the opening night to review.
The Lehman Trilogy features three virtuosic actors playing multiple roles and this production was originally staged at the National Theatre in London in 2018. It has garnered numerous accolades, including five Tony Awards in 2022 for Best Play, Best Director, and Best Actor.
Lehman Brothers was founded by German Jew Henry Lehman who, in 1844, joined the flood of immigrants leaving Europe for a dream of America. Two other brothers, Emanuel and Mayer soon joined him from Bavaria with Lehman Brothers becoming officially established in 1850. The firm evolved from a general store into a major commodities trading company, specializing in cotton. The play traces the development and growth of the firm as it moved operations to New York City, where it expanded into investment banking and survived numerous challenges including the Civil War, both World Wars, and the Great Depression. By 2007, Lehman Brothers had grown to become the fourth-largest investment bank in the country, supposedly too large to fail.
The extraordinary set design for The Lehman Trilogy, by Es Devlin, features a glass and steel rotating box containing a contemporary office. There’s a board table, some chairs and a stack of the infamous ‘Lehman boxes’, containers that became a symbol of the firm’s collapse as ex-employees were filmed exiting the building carrying out their personal possessions. The spinning of the box takes us into the hustle and bustle of New York City, allows us to traverse the play’s temporal leaps, as well as acting as a kinetic manifestation of the dizzying development of the banking business.
The backdrop features Luke Halls’ evocative videos that add stunning panoramic vistas to the action. There is the familiar skyscrapered New York cityscape, a bleak sea view with a blurred Statue of Liberty offering the promise of opportunity; there are burning cotton fields and, as the firm collapses, a dizzying montage of computer screens that are a powerful visual representation of the financial pandemonium that brought about the near-death experience of Western capitalism.
A pianist, Cat Beveridge, sits beneath the stage to the right echoing the era of the silent movie pianists. Nick Powell’s score references the combination of classical and Vaudeville musical styles used to accompany those early films as well as the melancholia of Jewish melodies. The music is an effective device that often motivates the action as well as creating effective transitions, and with the use of intertitles and the black, white and grey colour palate, the whole production glistens with a monochrome retro sheen.
The three actors all have to turn on a pin as they transition brilliantly from their Lehman family roles, including playing wives and children, to fleshing out a cast of supporting characters. There’s a Greek restaurateur trying to build his business, an elderly rabbi hilariously testing bar mitzvah boys on their knowledge of the Torah and a Wall Street high-wire artist whose eventual demise is a metaphor for the plunging markets of 2007.
Essex-born John Heffernan plays the waspish, fey Henry Lehman. He is the elder and ‘head’ of the three brothers who is ‘always right’, using his brain to create plans for business growth and familial development. It’s a clever performance that inhabits the character without needing to rely on fake beards and other signifiers.
American actors Howard W. Overshown and Aaron Krohn take on the roles of Emanuel Lehman, known as the ‘the arm’ of the family, and ‘the potato’ Mayer Lehman, who acts as the glue between his older siblings. Overshown has a tremendous physical presence that enhances his ‘enforcer’ role in the family set-up, Krohn brings a self-confidence and a sense of assuredness to his portrayal, finessing his brothers to achieve his aims and impressing with an extended comic dance routine in which he ‘twists’ into old age and death.
The Lehman Trilogy is a wonderfully multi-layered historical epic that peeks under the surface of the American dream to find a dark underbelly poisoned by the cancer of speculative capitalism. The play’s themes of Jewishness, the immigrant experience, the seemingly unstoppable rise but also the fragility of capitalism, and the precariousness of family dynasties – Thomas Mann’s family epic Buddenbrooks must have been an influence – still feel vital and contemporary. The play has been criticised for not addressing the issues of slavery- the family was involved in the slave trade – and for promoting Jewish stereotypes, but I think that’s missing the point. I see it as a Jewish parable or maszal with the drama being punctuated by Jewish prayers, religious festivals and celebrations. As the family loses control of the firm, the traditional values and certainties of ritual are banished from the company’s culture leading to decay and collapse. The play is a serious piece of theatre, albeit with plenty of humour, and this is a production that fizzes with energy and ideas. The text with its Old Testament lilt and musical flow has lost none of its relevance and the play still demands to be seen.
The Lehman Trilogy
Gillian Lynne Theatre
166 Drury Lane,
London,
WC2B 5PW
The Lehman Trilogy runs until 5 January 2025