Writer: Stefano Massini adapted by Ben Power
Director: Sam Mendes
‘Adapt or die’ could well be the motto of the Lehman dynasty. From selling fabric to slaves and plantation owners in Alabama in the mid 19th Century to investing in arms manufacture both during and after the Second World War, the Lehmans were unconscionable financiers. But their stories make for gripping theatre in Sam Mendes’ production that returns to London after a successful Broadway run.
Apart from the actors, little has changed since the show originally opened at the National Theatre in 2018. There, its main draw was Simon Russell Beale, but he is not missed at The Lehman Trilogy’s new home in the elegantly designed Gillian Lynne Theatre. Michael Balogun, Hadley Fraser and Nigel Lindsay play the three Jewish brothers who come to America from Germany in the 1840s.
Henry (Lindsay) comes first. The long journey on the boat is an education for him. He learns how to drink. He learns how to gamble. But he doesn’t settle in New York, he goes down South and starts a fabric shop. He’s a canny businessman and opens his shop on Sundays when the streets are full of slaves on their way to church.
Next to come is Emmanuel (Balogun). He’s less charming than his brother. He’s more serious and more committed to making money. And then, finally, Mayer (Fraser) arrives who manages to moderate both of his brothers’ ambitions into projects that are achievable. In just a few years, they have changed their business from a shop selling fabric to a shop that buys raw cotton from nearby plantations to sell to factories at a much higher price. Their business is based on slavery.
Indeed, Three Brothers, the first and longest part of the trilogy, is the most interesting of the three and it’s fascinating to see how their business grows, with Emmanuel setting up office in New York. Each brother is carefully delineated. Lindsay’s Henry is affable, the perfect friendly shopkeeper with a constant twinkle in his eye. Balogun’s Emmanuel is harder to like; he shouts and he sulks, always looking for profit. As the middleman, Fraser’s Mayer is calm and happy in the present moment.
But Stefano Massini’s play doesn’t just focus on the brothers’ wheeling and dealing; it also provides glimpses into their private lives, their marriages, their children. But even in these situations, the brothers will not take no for an answer. Emmanuel falls in love with a woman who is already engaged to another, but he visits her every Sunday for months until she finally agrees to marry him instead. Mayer writes down a list of potential wives and then gives each points out of 100 as he whittles the names down to one. Each one of these women is played to great comic effect by Lindsay.
The finest creation of the evening must be Bobbie Lehman who, with his interest in art and in horses (even if they don’t win races), is at first a disappointment to his parents who want him the be a ‘banker who paints’ rather than ‘a painter’. Always in a pair of sunglasses, Fraser brings something of Andy Warhol to the role, and Bobbie seems unfazed by the financial crisis of 1929. He buys pictures by Cezanne instead.
The three actors march, prowl and clamber over Es Devlin’s glass cube, a modern day office suite that revolves on stage. As we move into the 1980s it appears to spin to dizzying effect with Luke Hall’s video design that curves along the back of the stage. The way the three men move, always ending up facing the audience when the revolve stops, is a form of choreography. The three men never miss a step. Just below the stage, Yshani Perinpanayagam plays a piano, a haunting score by Nick Powell.
There is only one downside to the show; its length. It runs for nearly three and a half hours and even though the most recent past is represented with breathless speed, the final part of the trilogy, The Immortals, does drag a little, though the little dance that Fraser does as his character appears to beat the decades is a bright highlight of this last act.
The Lehman Trilogy is a biography of one of the most influential families in American history but also it is also an examination of capitalism and greed. And even though we know what happened to the Lehman Brothers in the end, it seems that we may have learnt nothing from their downfall.
Runs until 20 May 2023
