Theatre in Review: The Lehman Trilogy (Nederlander Theatre)If, like me, you are starved for epic theatre, cheer up: The Lehman Trilogy has returned. It's not surprising that most new productions right now feature small casts, spare designs, and intimate subject matter; it's a miracle that companies are putting on shows at all, following the months of lockdown that left them depleted and strapped for cash. Each new effort feels like a triumph, no matter its size, and much of the best new writing is attuned to urgent questions of race, gender, and economic inequality. But it's at times like these that one longs most for theatre consisting of big ideas and grand gestures, to help us understand where we've been and where we're headed. For this reason alone, it's easy to be thrilled simply at the raising of the curtain at the Nederlander: Stefano Massini's play (translated by Ben Power), calls for only three actors. (Actually, that's not strictly true, for reasons you'll have to see for yourself.) But it is stunningly staged by Sam Mendes and gifted with a sweeping production design. And it tackles nothing less than the history of the financial firm Lehman Brothers, from the day in 1844 when the first member of the family stepped onto these shores, to the morning in 2008, when the phone rang, delivering the news that the company was insolvent. It is a profoundly American story, of immigrant aspiration, ever-changing definitions of success, and an empire built on a solid foundation of wealth until it vanished into thin air. It's also a story that, by all rights, belongs in a history book or one of those multi-generational novels that used to adorn the best-seller list. In addition, Massini breaks a fundamental law of drama by mixing short dramatic exchanges with lengthy passages of narration. (The three leads, cast as the founding Lehman brothers, take on any number of other roles as well.) It sounds like the driest of lectures, a PBS documentary for those with advanced degrees in calculus. But, in the hands of these theatre artists, it is pure magic, a three-hour-plus experience that flies by in a flash. It begins with the arrival of Henry (née Heyum) Lehman in Montgomery, Alabama, where he sets up a clothing store for working people. As he prospers, he is joined by his brothers Mayer and Emmanuel. Despite their wildly different personalities -- Henry is controlling, an idea man; Emmanuel a hard-working contrarian; and Mayer the eternal compromiser -- they form a highly effective unit. Soon, clothing gives way to trading in cotton, followed by commodities like coffee and tobacco. By this time, the family is based in New York; as another generation comes of age, investments in railroads and the Panama Canal expand the empire. By now, the Lehmans are proudly calling themselves "merchants of money...We buy it. We sell it. We lend it. We trade it. This is how the recipe works. Our flour is money." Many more developments follow, including swelling profits from wartime and the new world of stock trading. Even as their fortunes multiply to the point where they scarcely seem real, the same question is repeatedly asked: "But is it enough?" The wording varies, but the intent does not. Despite its unorthodox approach, The Lehman Trilogy works, first because Powers' translation has the quality of fine blank verse, framing its ideas with a stunning economy. Henry, the oldest brother, newly arrived, comments, "Seen up close on this cold September morning, America moved like a musical box. For every window that closed, another would open. For every cart that vanished around a corner, another would appear. For every customer who got up from a cafe table, another would sit down." It's an apt vision of the new world through the eyes of a pious German-Jewish immigrant. A prospective investor is described as "a barrel stuffed in a shirt and tie, a white beard, always sweating," the verbal equivalent of a Thomas Nast caricature. The Lehman's complicity in slavery is expressed by a friendly doctor, who, surveying a devastated, postbellum Montgomery, notes, "Everything that was built here was built on a crime. The roots run so deep you cannot see them but the ground beneath our feet is poisoned. It had to end this way." "Not everything is about money," Mayer insists at one point, a statement that seems increasingly passé as the wealth piles up. Philip, son of Emmanuel, turns the firm into a transportation powerhouse: In one especially telling moment, we see the fast-talking, hyper-efficient Philip lecturing his elders, Mayer and Emmanuel, former lions of business suddenly looking old and sidelined. Philip in turn will be tossed aside by his son, Bobby, who -- when not at the racetrack or running around with flashy divorcées -- must drag the firm (and, by extension, the US economy) out of the Great Depression. Despite his frantic, continuous embrace of the next big thing -- which includes the arrival of the computer age -- Bobby is the last Lehman, supplanted by a cadre of traders and managers who preside over the entirely abstract business of making money from money. (We are told that Bobby "restructured and expanded and diversified. He made the simple things complicated. So complicated that perhaps they would never again be fully understood.") In the process, everything that once defined the family disappears: The death of Henry, the first to go, is greeted with a traditional seven-day shiva and all the attendant rituals; the death of Philip is handled with a three-minute moment of silence. After all, time is money. It all unfolds on Es Devlin's glass-enclosed 21st-century office suite, placed on a turntable and backed by the curved panorama of Luke Halls' video projections, most of them in black and white, which depict Montgomery in 1844, fields of cotton (sometimes seen aflame), factories with smokestacks, ocean vistas, stock market figures, and an ever-changing New York City skyline. When one or another of the Lehmans, driven by anxiety, has a nightmare of the future, it is accompanied by images of rapidly scudding clouds tinted in a menacing red. The design doesn't sit quite as well in the Nederlander Theatre as it did at Park Avenue Armory, where the play was first seen in New York; a slight but important sense of distance is lost. Nonetheless, it is an extraordinary achievement, aided by Katrina Lindsay's costumes and Jon Clark's lighting, which, interestingly, gets many effects out of the ceiling units built into the set. Sound designers Nick Powell and Dominic Bilkey combine Powell's original score, played live, with a range of effects, from seagulls and fireworks to the insistent melody of "The Beat Goes On." The cast is at all times extraordinary. Simon Russell Beale invests Henry with an almost religious sense of awe at his new life and its many transformations, a characterization that contrasts sharply with his portrayal of Philip, who is deceptively nerdy yet impatient to cast aside any opposition, and Ruth Lamar, Bobby's tough, wisecracking first wife. Adam Godley is especially impressive as Bobby, flying high on the acquisition of cash as if it were cocaine until, at last, physically retracting into himself as death comes calling. New to the cast is Adrian Lester, who adds an enormous authority to the narrative passages; he also captures Emmanuel's penchant for head-butting as well as the ultra-smooth persona of a new hire who introduces the concept of marketing to the firm's staid partners. (He is an avatar of the future in more than one way: "A young man from Mississippi. Segregated at school, now he stands in the boardroom. On the top floor.") Mendes engineers an exciting coup de théâtre at the end of the second act, marking the 1929 stock market crash, an effect that is topped by the finale -- a simple but brilliant bit of staging that rings down the curtain on the Lehmans after more than 170 years. By then, everyone involved has made the conclusive case that The Lehman Trilogy is about so much more than the rise and fall of a family business. The Lehmans came to here to partake of the American dream; for better or for worse, they ended up reshaping it. --David Barbour 
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