‘The Lehman Brothers Trilogy’: An Epic of Family, Finance and Downfall
A review of ‘The Lehman Brothers Trilogy’, by Stefano Massini; The Gillian Lynne Theatre, 2024.
To the Gillian Lynne Theatre with friends, then, and the Lehman Brothers Trilogy. Written by Stefano Massini and directed by Sam Mendes, it charts the rise and fall of the Lehman family, who came from humble beginnings as German immigrants to America and created one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions. The story spans more than 150 years in American history, and explores ambition, industry and greed. It is, in the end, a thoughtful (and amusing) study of America, capitalism and the human cost of seeking profit above all things.
There are three parts, separated by intervals. In the first, we meet Henry (actually Hayum), Emanuel (actually Mendel), and Mayer (the officers at Ellis Island could only get the latter’s name right). They come to America one by one in the mid-19th century. Bound by cleverness, industry and the desire to succeed, and divided by distinct personalities and skills, they become prominent cotton traders in Alabama. They then turn to their benefit a string of disasters—the burning of the cotton fields and the American Civil War, to name two—and move into banking.
They are united by cleverness, industry and the desire to succeed, and divided by distinct personalities and skills.
The second part follows the next generation of Lehmans as it attempts to build on the legacy of Henry, Emanuel and Mayer. This generation is marked by its adaptability. Now in New York, where everything changes all the time, these Lehmans, who are educated and move among the ruling class, set themselves apart by spotting trends and solving problems, which they exploit for profit. The third and final part concerns the breakdown of the family’s hold on the business as the world in general, and banking in particular, grow more and more abstract.
This is a play about the American dream, about money, and about family. It studies the moral implications of unchecked ambition and the pursuit of profit at all costs. The Lehmans are sketched sympathetically: they are clever, creative and hard-working. But they are involved in the cotton trade; they make money selling weapons. In fact they foreshadow the abstract world of the third act by removing themselves mentally from the effects of their work, stressing only, as it were, the balance sheet. What begins, for Henry, Emanuel and Mayer, as a means of survival in a new country ends in greed. This is suggested by Massini in the slow loss of the Lehmans’ faith and in the breakdown of the family: the first binds the Lehmans together; the second binds them to history, the wider community, and transcendent ethics. The family’s loss of faith suggests a recentring: they, and not God, are now the focus of the world.
The players in such a production have a big task. Just three actors (John Heffernan, Howard W. Overshown and Aaron Krohn) play every character over the 150 years. They do this brilliantly, postponing our disbelief even when (for instance) the young Herbert Lehman sits on a box and strokes his father’s beard. Their job is made harder by the fact that the play is not told in a linear fashion, which gives the production a poetic quality. These actors, who tell the story not in the first person but the third, must translate events into a visual experience that keeps its coherence and emotional heft. That they do this (on a single, revolving stage in front of a large screen) is to the credit of everyone involved in the production. The play is rendered beautifully. And gosh, is it funny.
These actors, who tell the story not in the first person but the third into a visual experience that keeps its coherence and emotional heft.
Its style is not ‘just’ cosmetic (I use the scare quotes because presentation does, in fact, matter). That, for instance, the characters step into and out of roles fluidly underlines the idea that history repeats itself, or at least rhymes, as the psychoanalyst Theodor Reik put it. The acting is equally fluid in style, reflecting the shifting nature of capitalism and its effects. (Not for nothing did Zigmunt Baumann call our age ‘liquid modernity’.) Those who chiefly succeed under capitalism are David Goodhart’s ‘Anywheres’—the educated, mobile types—and the world they champion unavoidably liquifies the settled and the rooted, causing widespread alienation and despair. The actors are flexible; they will play any role at any time and any place. This is a commentary on the liberal individual par excellence, able—and here I paraphase Bukowski—to ‘invent himself and reinvent himself’. The choral speech, long monologues and minimal piano accompaniment meanwhile evoke the mythical and the epic. For this is, in the proper sense of the word, an epic story.
The Lehman Brothers Trilogy is extraordinary. It blends historical detail and poetic abstraction. It looks into the heart of capitalism and those who thrive under it and does so by means of refraction, through the lens of one family’s rise and fall. We are called to consider the cost of pursuing wealth, the price of seeking and holding power, the demands involved in playing the capitalist game. This play, after all, demands much of its players. But all that makes it rewarding theatre for us, the viewers: for this a story for the ages about desire, achievement—and downfall.
