The Lehman Trilogy - Review

Gillian Lynne Theatre, London

**

Written by Stefano Massini

Adapted by Ben Power

Directed by Sam Mendes

l-r Hadley Fraser, Nigel Lindsay, Michael Balogun

As a tour-de-force of theatrical skill, the National Theatre's The Lehman Trilogy, now revived at Covent Garden's Gillian Lynne Theatre has to remain one of London's highlights. The 3hr 20min opus, reflecting the transition of the american dream into a nightmare is a sublime presentation of acting skill and technical genius. Stepping into the roles of the three Lehman brothers are Nigel Lindsay as Henry, Hadley Fraser as Mayer and Michael Balogun as Emanuel.

And of course what makes this production quite such a Herculean effort for its actors is that not only are they playing the three immigrant brothers, setting up in Montgomery Alabama in the 1840s, but they are playing every other supporting role too.

Notwithstanding the actors’ excellence, matched by Es Devlin’s ingenious stage designs that have translated well to the Gillian Lynne Theatre together with Luke Halls' mesmerising video projections, the play is profoundly flawed both in its literary construct and even more so, in this particular iteration.

The Lehman Trilogy opens with scenery being constructed out of dozens of cardboard 'Bankers Boxes', items that are synonymous with the collapse of the Lehman Brothers merchant bank in the 2008 financial crisis, when news broadcasts streamed images of hundreds of the bank's employees pouring out of its offices in Canary Wharf and Wall Street carrying their personal belongings in those boxes, images that came to define the impact of the 2008 meltdown on the world's financial centres. Equally, the play’s opening presents us with the three leads, clearly dressed as observant patrician Jews, one by one getting off the boat and heading for Alabama. The three never leave the stage throughout, nor change their costumes as the years roll by. Likewise, the cardboard boxes are also on stage from start to finish.

The message is clear, an insidious antisemitic conflation permeating the entire play, that visually links Jews with sharp financial practice and corporate collapse. That this trope of an association is even then factually inaccurate, given that the Lehman brothers’ descendants lost their last familial connection with the bank in 1969 and therefore had no connection whatsoever with the Lehman corporation at the time of its collapse, is treated by Stefano Massini as little more than an inconvenient truth.

Where this production compounds racial insensitivity even further is in the casting of Michael Balogun as Emanuel Lehman. Alabama in 1844 was a slave state in the heart of America’s south. A place where, especially in the play's first act, Balogun plays a person of self-made privilege. This of course was an opportunity not afforded to Alabama’s black population at the time and in his casting, the production’s creatives and producers have shown scant acknowledgment of Alabama’s desperately troubling history of racial oppression.

The Lehman Trilogy’s 21st century stagecraft may well be state of the art and its performances, arguably, the best in town. Its ethics however, are mired in the Dark Ages.

Runs until 20th May 

Photo credit: Mark Douet

The Lehman Trilogy - Review

Piccadilly Theatre, London


****


Written by Stefano Massini
Adapted by Ben Power
Directed by Sam Mendes

Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles, Adam Godley

Amidst the financial crash of 2007/08, one of the most memorable images was that of the summarily fired employees of Lehman Brothers investment bank streaming out of their offices in New York and London’s Canary Wharf, their personal possessions unceremoniously borne in those ubiquitous cardboard Bankers Boxes.

Those branded boxes form a scenic mainstay throughout Stefano Massini’s The Lehman Trilogy and in this opus of a play, that spans from the middle of the 19th century through to the early years of the 21st, the writer’s suggestions are clear. Not only were the seeds of the bank’s downfall planted at its very inception, but also that much of the responsibility for this most recent of financial calamities, lies at the feet of the three Lehman brothers who had arrived on the USA’s eastern seaboard as penniless Jewish immigrants some 160 years before.

This is an unpleasant even if unsurprising conflation, for the last surviving member of the Lehman dynasty to have actually served on the bank’s board was Bobby Lehman, a grandson of the founders and who himself had died in 1969, some 40 years prior to the bank’s collapse and hence well distanced from the decisions that led to its demise. This lapse of time however has not troubled Massini. Much as was sung in Monty Python’s Spamalot: “You won’t succeed on Broadway if you dont have any Jews”, so Massini switches Broadway for Wall Street and, like an East End mural, subtly fuels a troubling trope. 

The stagecraft on display in this 3.5 hours epic is breathtaking. Assuming all roles, genders, and ages, Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles are a tour de force of a trio. With accents that are never too laboured and Sam Mendes having focused on the tiniest of nuances in each man’s work, their performances have to be amongst the finest in town. Es Devlin’s staging is ingeniously and suggestively slick - a simple minimally furnished revolve (complete with said boxes) enveloped by Luke Halls’ wraparound video screen - but it is the three actors who convincingly convey time, place and characters as they drive the narrative from the brothers’ humble beginning as Alabama cotton traders through to their dominance of New York’s financial district.

Massini keeps the three brothers clad in European/Victorian tailcoats throughout, reflecting the costume and time of their arrival on the eastern seaboard. But while this simplicity of clothing places a dramatic requirement upon the three men to enact their respective characters through their performances - a challenge that they not only rise to, but emphatically smash - its continual presence throughout the piece only heightens the play’s subliminally uncomfortable associations. 

Taking a step back from the production’s breath-taking technical brilliance - opening now in the West End having only just returned from an acclaimed, brief, New York transfer - the quality of the writing does not match the standards of Mendes’ cast and crew. While the story revolves around (and not entirely incorrectly) the brute avarice of capitalism with the horrors of the 1929 Wall Street crash featuring heavily in the second act, the argument is one-sided and there is little if any respect paid to the positive aspects of capital markets.

For sure the markets are imperfect, often profoundly so, but it was and remains risked capital that often created national as well as private wealth and much mass employment too. But for Massini it seems that these are inconvenient truths. Similarly, the story’s vast timeline is managed well until the third act’s endgame, when the four decades following Bobby Lehman’s demise are telescoped into a barely fleshed-out finale.

Notwithstanding its flawed message, in these times of unparalleled political polarisation The Lehman Trilogy will be lapped up by eager audiences. And for sheer technical theatrical genius, the play is in a class of its own.

Runs until 31st August. To be screened via NTLive on 25 July 

Photo credit: Mark Douet

The Lehman Trilogy - Review

National Theatre, London



*****


Written by Stefano Massini
Adapted by Ben Power
Directed by Sam Mendes

Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley

The creation, rise and ultimate fall of one of the largest investment firms in the USA might not seem like the most interesting subject matter to embrace for three and a half hours, but with The Lehman Trilogy at the National Theatre Sam Mendes directs an epic and engrossing tale of three brothers over three centuries, forever foreshadowed by our knowledge of the 2008 financial crash.

The trilogy opens with ‘Part 1: Three Brothers’, with each Lehmann brother arriving on the shores of the newly prosperous USA from Rimpar in Germany and settling among the cotton plantations of Montgomery, Alabama. The impeccable Simon Russell Beale plays Henry Lehman, the oldest of the three and the chief decision maker much to the chagrin of second brother Emanuel Lehman (Ben Miles). Adam Godley completes the trio as Mayer Lehman, affectionately (and less affectionately) referred to as ‘the potato’ and the intermediary between his older brothers. The three narrate the tale and, between them, bring to life the wives, classmates, colleagues and children required to take us through their journey of growth and multiple rebrands thanks to the invention of that ineluctable staple of today’s business world: the middlemen. From cotton to coffee to Wall Street, the three performers are a masterclass in storytelling. Es Devlin’s design, a surprisingly unpretentious square, rotating, glass-laden stage; video backdrop from Luke Halls; and live tinkled ivories played by Candida Caldicot drive the action from light business banter to massive loss.

In ‘Part 2: Fathers & Sons’ the second generation of American Lehmans take the helm, with the scarily strategic Philip (Beale) pushing the business into the industrial age in much the same way he chooses a wife (marks out of 100, obviously, with Godley hilariously embodying each candidate). In this Act, the play really embraces its “The Big Short”- esque style, informing the audience as much as entertaining them, as Philip’s own son (Robert, played suavely by Godley) describes the impending shift of fortune from industry to entertainment at the beginning of the 20th Century. This style is further highlighted with the delicate balance of the ever present but unseen and fictitious tightrope walker Caprinsky as a masterly metaphor, together with the continuous comic candour that Mendes directs so well.

‘Part 3: The Immortal’ sees an interesting female finally but briefly enter the fold with the introduction of the brash Ruth Lamar from Illinois (Beale, charming), who is Bobby Lehman’s wife and partner through the crash of 1929 where Lehman Brothers’ hangs on by the skin of its teeth. The imminent downfall of the company at the beginning of the next century is underscored by the repetitive script, which is as deafening as the quite purposeful shift into consumerism which firmly earns the bank its “evil corporation” crown.

The Lehman Trilogy is an intelligent look behind the scenes of the American Dream and the smoke and mirrors of the corporate world, brought to light by Mendes’ astute direction and a stellar cast. 3.5 hours well spent.

Runs until 20th October

Reviewed by Heather Deacon

Photo credit: Mark Douet