Review of The Lehman Trilogy, a play by Stefano Massini

The Lehman Trilogy

Review of The Lehman Trilogy, a play by Stefano Massini

At Huntington Theater through July 16, 2023

Review By Andy Hoffman

Tony winner for Best Play in 2022 The Lehman Trilogy, playing at the Huntington Theatre through July 16, 2023. It tells the history of Lehman Brothers investment bank from its roots as a dry-goods store in Montgomery AL in the 1840s to the last involvement of anyone named Lehman in 1969, with the death of Robert Lehman, grandson of the founders. Over the course of three acts running three and a half hours, the play reveals the evolution of three Jewish European brothers on the make in America, and what their ambitions wrought.

The Lehman Trilogy occupies the stage much more like a medieval mystery play than a modern drama. The three actors – ably accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Joe LaRocca – do more telling than showing. But this telling has pathos, humor and drama as the three actors act out dozens of roles, from generation to generation, wives, children, grandchildren, and the rabbis that teach them. They also represent the various partners the brothers take on, the leaders that succeed them at their investment bank, and a wire-walker. Each actor – Steven Skybell, Joshua David Robinson, and Firdous Bamji – takes on accents, gestures, and speech patterns as a dizzying series of characters march through the Lehman family’s lives. The Huntington, and I assume other theaters that have braved this production, deserve high praise for their ambition. I saw The Lehman Trilogy on a recent Wednesday evening, and I found myself hugely impressed not only by the performance I saw, but also the realization that these performers had done a matinee earlier that day and still gave this extraordinary show.

While the play risks presenting a history lesson rather than a traditional play, the showmanship of the production as well as the quality of the script and the artistry of the actors transcends telling. The music also draws us in and along. Using a combination of plain crates and projection, the stage comes alive, especially as Emmanuel Lehman finds himself drawn to New York. As told in the play, which seems historically accurate, Alabama experienced a season of fire in the 1840s so severe it nearly destroyed the economic life around Montgomery. Already expanding to seed and farm implements, the Lehmans became brokers for the slave-grown cotton at the nearby plantations, using their capacity to put raw cotton into the hands of northern

manufacturers to fund the rebirth of Alabama’s economy. Inventing the role of cotton brokers allowed the Lehman brothers to become brokers more generally. They survived the Civil War in part because their family connection embodied the trust that allowed trade across the warring sides. After the war, Emmanuel drags his remaining brother, Meyer, to New York, where their trading house becomes the Lehman Brothers investment bank we all recognize.

The Lehman Trilogy breaks the story into parts: from the founding until after the Civil War; from the war to the beginning of the 20th century; and then until the end of the Lehman family control of the company. With all that happened over those 130 years, we must accept some serious elisions in the story. We hear nothing of the Lehman’s complicity in the slave trade or how they managed through the various economic contractions and collapses. We do get a bit of a sense of how they survived the Great Depression, but in truth even though the play presents the history of an iconic American business, the Lehman family history makes the play tick. The first generation in the US, freed from the restrictions placed on Jews in Europe, scrambles to make a living, first as peddlers and then as brokers. They retain their faith, seemingly as one of the few Jewish families in Montgomery. As the Lehman become wealthy, they lose their connection to their Judaism, to the extent that the play mentions nothing of the Holocaust. When Henry, the family pioneer, dies, they shut the shop for a full seven days to sit shiva. When Emmanuel dies forty years later, they close the bank for three days. They observe the death of the second generation for a paltry three minutes. The Kaddish – the Jewish prayer for the dead – maintains its impact projected in Hebrew upon the set, but the Lehmans seem to have lost their way

The Huntington Theatre’s production of THE LEHMAN TRILOGY will run through July 23, 2023! This gives you an extra week to see this amazing show. Do yourself a favor and go! Read the review again HERE!