The Lehman Trilogy: A Bracing Sign of the Times
René Thornton Jr., Mark Nelson and Edward Gero. Photo by Teresa Castracan Photography
Review by Ian Kirkland
In an economy increasingly vying for our shrinking attention, any commitment longer than an hour and further than a click away can be a hard sell. Is it a coincidence that one of the most lauded, successful, and yes, longest plays of the past decade investigates the origins of this freewheeling economy? Are we eager for answers? For absolution? Are we gluttons for punishment? Or has the hard sell just become the sell?
Whether an indulgence of the market or a rebellion against it, Stefano Massini’s The Lehman Trilogy is undoubtedly a triumph. Since its translation into English by Mirella Cheeseman and its significant adaptation by playwright Ben Power, the play has carved out a generous space in the theater world, touring and transferring between theaters across Broadway, LA, and the West End for the past seven years.
Exalted by Sam Mendes’s acclaimed 2018 production, the show centers on the lives, legacies, and descendants of Henry, Emanuel, and Mayer Lehman, who together established Lehman Brothers as a stalwart and formidable character in the story of America. Covering the company’s 164-year history, from dry-goods purveyor in the nineteenth century, to cotton supplier in the twentieth, and investment bank in the twenty-first, the play is a monumental saga.
Edward Gero, René Thronton Jr., and Mark Nelson. Photo by Teresa Castracane Photography
These are not low stakes to play with, and director Arin Arbus rises to their challenge. As both the show’s DC premiere and one of its first restagings, Arbus’ vision is an early example of how difficult, yet how rewarding, novel imaginings of this production can be. Driven by a highly expository and at times didactic narrative, the show risks a certain park-and-bark monotony on the page. With Arbus’ production, however, one wonders what that page could even have looked like. Bristling with immediacy, Shakespeare Theatre Company’s The Lehman Trilogy is a snappy yet cerebral study of our cultural memory.
Edward Gero, Mark Nelson, and René Thornton Jr. are exceptional storytellers, equal parts witty, facetious, and frank in their portrayals of the Lehmans and their many relatives, friends, wives, acquaintances, and more. In the over 30 characters they share, Gero, Nelson, and Thornton Jr. are truly as industrious as the titular brothers they portray. They shift easily between raucous and sullen, cheeky and noble, capturing in each character something distinct and truthful.
Lorenzo Pisoni’s staging and movement coaching underscores this mutability, allowing for everything from reverence as the brothers sit shiva for one another to hilarity when Phillip Lehman searches for an “appropriate” wife. The range of character embodiments also engages as much as they methodize.
Mark Nelson, Edward Gero and René Thornton Jr. Photo by Teresa Castracane Photography
Melodrama and caricature help to animate the play, but so does the magic conjured up by its technical team. Marsha Ginsberg’s set is at once a shout and a whisper. The curtain rises, and the stage is dressed with nothing but a mountain of shredded paper and two industrial dumpsters. A janitor sweeps as radio hosts report in shock that America’s fourth-largest investment bank has filed for bankruptcy.
Not only does the allegorical imagery of Ginsberg’s set intensify as the Lehmans work tirelessly to expand their company and their influence, but it grows more complicated and nuanced with every scene, begging questions about ownership, pride, retribution, and complicity. The question echoing in my own mind: Is this a tragedy, or a warning?
Pulling at the same strings are Yi Zhao and Hannah Wasileski, the minds behind the show’s entrancing lighting and projection design. Together, Zhao and Wasileski weave a rich and textured tapestry against which dreams, nightmares, and histories both great and small play out. As Shakespeare Theatre Company’s dramaturg Dr. Drew Lichtenberg notes in his incisive parsing of the show’s history, the play’s metaphors try to make the elusive tangible even as it disappears. What Zhao and Wasileski achieve in their designs is the physical manifestation of this effort, the cat-and-mouse game between memory and reality, tragedy and hope.
Edward Gero, Mark Nelson, and René Thronton Jr. Photo by Teresa Castracane Photography
The general cohesion of Shakespeare Theatre Company’s creative team is astounding considering not only the historical and ideological scope of the show but the script’s characteristic shifts in tone. While I fear Massini and Power’s script may age faster than anticipated in the coming years, Arin Arbus’s vision of the Lehmans largely elides hagiography and the contrivances of the staged biography (though who can ever predict how distant a jukebox adaptation is).
With Shakespeare Theatre Company’s staging of The Lehman Trilogy, Arin Arbus illustrates the intricacies of the Lehman legacy. From the burdens of wanton ambition to the vicissitudes of a free-market economy to the collapse of the corporations that have come to dominate it, our world is turbulent and unruly. Whether directly or not, the Lehmans helped to make it so and from their successes and their failures, we must now learn.
Costume Design by Anita Yavich; Sound Design and Composition by Michael Costagliola
The Lehman Trilogy has been extended to March 30th at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harmon Hall—Sidney Harman Hall 610 F St NW, Washington, DC 20004. The show has a running time of three hours and 35 minutes, including two 15-minute intermissions. Tickets are available for purchase here.
Ian Kirkland is a writer and arts journalist based in the DMV. He has taken his love of performance to the Edinburgh Fringe, London’s VAULT festival, the West End, and most recently back to the DMV.V, where his very first reviews covered high school theater. When he’s not reading, he enjoys museum-hopping and watching Mariah Carey compilations.