Returning to the West End after successful runs on both sides of the Atlantic and in Australia, Sam Mendes’s production of The Lehman Trilogy, adapted by Ben Power from Stefano Massino’s Italian script, retains the power and originality it displayed at the National Theatre in 2018.
A three-hander (plus a pianist) with numerous characters depicted across a century, the play begins with the announcement of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers finance and trading empire, then winds back to Henry Lehman’s first steps on to American soil, in a 19th century, slave-owning, Alabama.
Starting small with a fabric shop, Henry and his two brothers, Emanuel and Mayer, soon diversify into the buying and selling of raw cotton, an enterprise which brings great wealth but which collapses with the Civil War.
What makes this play really work is the revolving set (by ES Devlin), the sound design (by Nick Powell) the video backdrops (by Luke Halls) that begin as descriptors and end a whizz of abstraction, and the audacity to have the actors narrate the action, whether a courtship, challenge, or calamity.
The Trilogy is presented as three different plays, each ending at a key moment in the family story. It’s about capitalism in the land of ‘the free’, yes, but from the perspective of a family who grabbed the chance to be middlemen in the money market.
Supporting characters are detailed, however transitory. The three actors (John Heffernan, Aaron Krohn, and Howard W Overshown) utilise the space and their skill to mimic situations, relationships, and the eroding of traditions.
The three original brothers are observant Jews, their descendants not so much, especially if it affects the making of money. They are true Americans, not straight off the boat, and fully embrace the pursuit of the dollar.
On paper, this is a show that should never work. It is about finance, capitalism, industry, and the stock market. But it is also about family, love, ambition, lifting up the poor, freezing out the poor, making the numbers work, playing dirty, walking the high wire, and doing the Twist.
Women are seen as wives and homemakers, little else, with their daughters invisible. This is a man’s world with not one female face other board. Perhaps there is a parallel story to be told from the perspective of the Lehman women.
We giggle as we see Emanuel (Overshown) and Mayer (Krohn) court their brides, laugh uneasily as second-generation Philip (Heffernan) speed-dates his way to the perfect woman, feel a ripple of shock when third-generation Bobbie (Krohn) cuts his bride short with “you’re not family”.
The Lehman Trilogy starts in 1844 with young Henry (Heffernan) feeling blessed in his new home, and ends in 2008 when the collapse of the firm that grew and grew through glass walls and scribbled signs, a mirrored floor and the pages of history.
One nephew, Herbert (Overshown), heads into politics and protest. The grandson, Bobbie, who loves to paint, collects expensive art for the boardroom walls.
It isn’t a perfect play, as written, as it has to cover so much from the slaves in the plantations of Montgomery to the panic of stockbrokers at the Wall Street Crash.
And yet, Power and Mendes pull it all back to three brothers who had a dream.
*****
The Lehman Trilogy is at the Gillian Lynne Theatre until 5 Jan 2025 with details here.
Image credit: Mark Douet