All I knew about
The Lehman Trilogy before seeing the show (the first in my 21st season as a Guthrie Theater subscriber), was that it was three and a half hours long, but worth it. If you read this blog with any regularity, you know that my favorite thing is a 90-minute-no-intermission show (being a morning person with a theater habit is challenging). But when the story covers over 150 years of US history, multiple generations of a consequential family, and a thorough and unflinching look at capitalism, allowances must be made. The Guthrie has kindly moved showtimes a half hour earlier, and stocked their bars with coffee and other treats to keep you fueled for what is a marathon visit to the theater. It takes a little effort, but you will be rewarded by a beautifully and uniquely written Tony-winning play, fascinating design, and three powerhouse performances. And maybe you'll also start to question the very foundation of our society. So get a good night's sleep, or take an afternoon nap, get some coffee, get comfy, and settle in for a singular night (or afternoon) of theater at the Guthrie,
continuing through October 12.
I'm a math person, but I am not an economics/finance person. I barely know who or what the Lehman Brothers are or were. I'm also in a privileged position where the financial collapse of the late aughts didn't really affect me. Which is to say - you do not need to know about, or have any particular interest in, money matters in order to enjoy this show. Because it's not just about financial stuff, it's about human stuff: an immigrant family who moved to this country, like so many others, to make a better life for themselves. Through hard work, intelligence, and a little luck, the humble shop they started turned into a billion-dollar international business. A business that survived literal fire and flood, multiple wars, the stock market crash of 1929, and an ever-changing world, but was finally done in by the
2008 financial crisis.
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| photo by Dan Norman |
Curiously enough, this very American story was originally written by Italian playwright Stefano Massini (as a 9-hour radio play), with this English language version adapted by British playwright Ben Power. This three and a half hour, three-actor version traveled from the West End in 2018, to Broadway in 2021 (after a few previews in unlucky March of 2020), to the Guthrie in 2024, via DC's
Shakespeare Theatre Company (reuniting two-thirds of the cast and much of the creative team from that production earlier this year). The play is written in narration style, with characters describing their thoughts, feelings, and movements. I'm fascinated by this style of writing, and I often love it; it's so descriptive and puts us right inside the characters and story. We begin with the three Lehman brothers, German Jewish immigrants who came to America in the mid 19th Century and settled in Alabama, where their fabric store turned into a cotton plantation supply store turned into a cotton brokerage turned into a bank turned into an investment company.
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Hayum Lehmann arrives in America and becomes Henry Lehman
(Edward Gero, photo by Dan Norman) |
The program notes that the three acts, the trilogy, are "three brothers," "fathers and sons," and "the immortal." You could also classify the trilogy as cotton, banks, and money. The business built on Southern gold, aka cotton, aka the free labor of enslaved people, moved North after the Civil War and transformed into something else. The original three brothers' story is very inspiring and relatable, you want them to do well in their new country, while still honoring the ways of the old. But as successive generations of the Lehman family take control of the business, and then non-Lehmans take control, things get uglier and uglier (think
Succession). The endless cycle of consumerism, capitalism, and making money above all else finally leads to a collapse when the idea of people "buying things they don't need with money they don't have" becomes unsustainable. The play doesn't get into the economics of it and what specifically happened, but focuses on the humanity (or sometimes not) of the people on the inside.
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we've entered the digital age
(Mark Nelson and Edward Gero, photo by Dan Norman) |
This humanity (or not) is perfectly embodied by our trio of actors, each playing dozens of characters, differentiated by a change in accent, physicality, or accessory over their changing period appropriate business attire. They spend as much or more of the show speaking directly to the audience as they do interacting with each other, and it's so easy to follow them through this epic journey. Edward Gero plays the eldest Lehman, Henry aka "the head," as we follow him off the boat on Ellis Island and into America, the land of dreams. Soon second brother Emanual, played by #TCTheater artist William Sturdivant, arrives and becomes "the arm" of the business, getting things done. Last but not least, youngest brother Mayer is sent over to keep the peace between the head and the arm, played by the impish Mark Nelson. But that's not all; they go on to play plantation owners, wives, business associates, children, and so much more in this expansive story. The three actors carry the story with ease, and as an audience member you feel so comfortable following wherever they lead us. Credit for this is also probably also due to director Arin Arbus, smoothly guiding this massive ship.
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a mountain of shredded paper
(William Sturdivant, photo by Dan Norman) |
How do you build a set for a story that spans centuries and cities? Abstractly. Before the play opens, the stage is covered in shredded paper so thick you can't see the floor, with a couple of yellow trash bins nestled amidst a huge pile of the stuff. In the first act, the major set piece is a large set of shelves with the goods sold in the Lehman Brothers' first store - fabric, suits, and cotton. In act two, we've cleaned up the floor a bit (or rather, the hard-working stagehands have), and replaced the shop shelves with elegant wooden tables and chairs representing the new Manhattan offices. Act three sees us firmly in the 20th Century, with modern desks and office chairs. Projections are used to help set the scene, from an Alabama cotton field to a New York City street, with the years ticking away in large numbers. Finally, a huge grid of fluorescent lights is raised and lowered to dramatic effect. (Scenic design by Marsha Ginsberg, costume design by Anita Yavich, lighting design by Yi Zhao, projection design by Hannah Wasileski.)
Don't be daunted by the seemingly excessive runtime of this show. It's an incredibly compelling story that examines the American Dream, where and how that fails us, the dangers of insatiable greed and consumerism, and the capitalistic world we live in and how we got here.
