THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
The Lehman Trilogy, an American epic, returns this month to London, specifically to the Gillian Lynne Theatre in the West End. It is a broad, expansive and sprawling tale, a quintessentially American rags to riches story. A narrative that takes us from first generation immigrant to commanding one of the most successful financial empires in the history of the world. It exemplifies and celebrates the American spirit of chutzpah that encourages us to see our country as a place where opportunities can be seized, utilized and used as springboards to dive into a brighter future armed with nothing but boundless optimism and good, sound business ideas.
All this from what I thought, even when Stefano Massini’s play was first produced back in 2018, looked like fairly unpromising source material.
I distinctly remember being in London when the Lehman Brothers offices closed down both here and in New York. It was terrible for the world economy and it had real tangible effects on many, many livelihoods and families and other economies that would feel the effects on the economy for years afterwards.
But a play about the history of the company at the center of the financial collapse? I could not picture it at the time.
More tribute to Massini’s script and the feat of accomplishment achieved through Ben Power’s adaptation of it that we are presented not only with a very real, human story, but one that is compelling, one that engenders genuine pathos, and one that does not shy away from exploring the horrible effects of the excesses of that company’s success with brutal honesty.
As it was in its Olivier award nominated first run in London nearly four and a half years ago, the play is directed by Sam Mendes, of American Beauty (and many other films) fame. Mendes and set designer Es Devlin use a pared down version from its original French and continental productions, achieving a cinematic magnificence by using a rotating transparent box that contains a boardroom, a smaller meeting room and an all purpose space that serves as, among other things, Henry Lehman’s general store when he first arrives on American shores and opens his doors in Montgomery, Alabama in 1844. Mendes, as with so many American stories, knows how to subtly weave, to lay narrative bricks gently into place to build to a wonderful crescendo at the end of each of the three parts of this historical trilogy, the rotating box serving as an ever-changing diorama in which the history of American capitalism plays out in fast-paced stichomythic glory.
All three performers – Nigel Lindsay, Hadley Fraser and Michael Balogun – are nothing short of incredible. Their energy undulating to exactly the right pitches of hard fury and soft subtlety and playing off each other’s moments of dramatic tension perfectly. They make the ride through over a century and a half of history swirl by in a flurry of riveting story, naturally stepping into a vast collection of characters peopling this grand and sweeping family history, from the dewy eyed mild mannered optimism of Mayer Lehman to the physical range needed to capture generations of younger Lehman children to the various women marrying into the Lehman empire and many more minor players in this story too. The effortlessly deft juggling all three performers do to seamlessly create this world, that in the end is so built around character, shows a natural, commanding charisma on stage.
Yshani Perinpanayagam’s musical accompaniment on the piano drives the emotional impact from Jewish folk songs to psychedelic melodies, aurally walking us into each era and awakening in us a vivid historicity.
My only slight misgiving as I left the theatre was not about length, though I did hear a few discordant qualms from other theatergoers about that. No, I am left wondering, in this epic tale, are Mendes and co glorifying American capitalism? Sure, we explore the brutal effects of the suicides on black Thursday and the emptiness of the credit crunch in 2008, but wasn’t it a jolly, romanticized ride along the way? Doesn’t it still give us a softened and sunny view of a system that has time and again brought the world to its knees? Are we aestheticizing away the real effects of profit on real people? It’s a cautionary note, more than an effort to put anyone off. It’s an incredible night of theater, but one should be careful not to let the entertainment and the power of the stage wipe away the tangible cost that venture capitalism’s prosperity has had on the rest of the world, particularly on those less well off.
