The Lehman Trilogy In The West End
“Give ‘em the old razzle-dazzle,” from Chicago, kept going through my mind as I watched Sam Mendes’ astonishing production of The Lehman Trilogy, now being revived on London’s West End at the spacious yet intimate Gillian Lynne Theatre.
Adapted by Ben Power from a script by Italian playwright Stefan Massini, The Lehman Trilogy is a complete history of the firm Lehman Brothers from its founding in 1844 to its implosion in the subprime meltdown of 2008. And by complete I do mean complete; it runs three hours and twenty minutes with two intermissions.
The Lehman Trilogy struck me as more history lesson than play. To a large extent it flips the time-honored dictum “Show, don’t tell” on its head with long passages of tell punctuated by brief scenes of show. It could have been an excruciating bore.
However, put the script in the hands of directorial wizard Sam Mendes, set designer Es Devlin, lighting designer Jon Clark, video designer Luke Halls, the composer and sound designer Nick Powell, and an exceptional three-member cast, all backed by what must have been an immense budget courtesy of England’s National Theatre and a laundry list of co-producers, and The Lehman Trilogy is a smash hit that has toured the world and is still going strong six years after its 2018 debut.
The story is told by three actors, John Heffernan (Henry Lehman), Howard W. Overshown (Emanuel Lehman), and Mayer Lehman (Aaron Krohn), who then go on to depict succeeding generations of Lehmans and a variety of subsidiary characters including a number of women.
All of them are terrific, gliding from character to character and accent to accent flawlessly. Krohn, whose chameleon-like facility was on ample display in the Stratford Festival’s 2023 production of Spamalot, was perhaps first among equals in this regard.
Designer Devlin has created an enormous glass rectangle, lit from within and without by Clark, that revolves constantly throughout the play as the performers pace about within it. It depicts the offices of the Lehman brothers in their various iterations through the years. Behind it is an immense cyclorama on which Halls’ ever-changing videos are projected. The cumulative effect can be and often is dazzling.
The Lehman Trilogy opens as a workman fills the last of a score or more of bankers boxes containing, we assume, the records of the defunct Lehman Brothers in 2008. Throughout the play, those boxes get moved, rearranged, stacked, unstacked, and toppled. It’s a device I have seen not work in any number of plays. Here it works quite nicely.
The entire play is accompanied to great effect by a score played on a single piano. Anyssa Neumann was the pianist at the performance I saw.
While the physical production is beyond impressive, most of the power of The Lehman Trilogy comes from that special effect known as great acting and Mendes is a master of helping talented performers bring intensity and nuance to their roles. (Rory McGregor, credited as “West End director, ” was charged with helping this company recreate that Mendes magic.)
It also helps that the story told by The Lehman Trilogy is a fascinating one, but despite all the razzle-dazzle it’s hard to escape the fact that this is basically a history lecture. If all history lectures were this compelling far fewer students would cut classes.
The Lehman Trilogy continues at the Gillian Lynne Theatre through January 5, 2025. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the official website for LW Theatres.
Footnote: The only programme available is a souvenir programme, sold for an extortionate £8, but it is helpful for filling in those lamentable lacunae in your knowledge of the Lehmans’ story.
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