The Lehman Trilogy

by Ben Power, Stefano Massini

On a cold September morning in 1844, a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside dreaming of a new life in the new world. He is joined by his two brothers, and an American epic begins. 163 years later, the firm they establish - Lehman Brothers - spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy, triggering the largest financial crisis in history.




Weaving together nearly two centuries of family history, this epic theatrical event charts the humble beginnings, outrageous successes and devastating failure of the financial institution that would ultimately bring the global economy to its knees. The Lehman Trilogy is the quintessential story of western capitalism, rendered through the lens of a single immigrant family.




Note: Nick Powell's original music from the Broadway and West End productions (which is available for streaming on music platforms) is not approved or licensed by Concord Theatricals for use in performance.

Genres: Plays

177 pages, Paperback

Published October 12, 2022

Reviews

[David]

Very interesting, very curious, mostly successful.

Based upon what I knew about this play going into it, and considering the awards hype that has attended it since first being produced in the West End in 2018, this was not what I had anticipated. While The Lehman Trilogy does present the history of the original Brothers, their non-European descendants, and their business dealings across 164 years, it does so fairly superficially.

It turns out that the family company - in its many iterations - is not the "real" subject of the play. Instead, Power's adaptation of Massani's novel uses the various characters to present the tale of American Capitalism. Henry (Heyum), Emmanuel (Mendel), Mayer, Phillip, Herbert, and Robert are often engaging and witty, but their focus is on the attainment of wealth and the flow of money: its production, acquisition, preservation, and lending; commodities; speculation; profit margins; investment strategies. It can make for a pretty dry, even cold, heart to the whole affair.

This will be in production at a local theater this spring, and I do look forward to seeing it. I think that endeavor is likely to succeed or fail based solely upon the quality of the three actors cast. If they can make the ideas and events they talk about for over three hours both intelligible and compelling, it could be a good show.

[Doug]

My rating and review are strictly about the SCRIPT, since I haven't seen a production of the play - yet. I understand that in Sam Mendes's seminal production, it all works beautifully onstage, and with three brilliant actors, it's a tour de force. However - on the page it is more often inert and rather boring. Partially, this is due to the fact that it is primarily my LEAST favorite form of theatre - that is, the actors for about 3/4s of the time TELL the audience the story as direct address, rather than SHOW them the story through interacted scenes between characters. As Mickey Jo points out in his vlog review (below), it is like watching an audiobook.

MY other issue is that I think what draws MOST people to the story is what happened in 2008 with the crash of the Lehman Brothers institution, and how all that came about. That constitutes literally the last page of the script - three pages prior, we are still in 1990, so there is no real payoff, as far as I can see, to what the entire enterprise is leading up to - it just ... happens.

I understand the original Italian version of the play ran over five hours, so perhaps Power's English adaptation doesn't do the play full justice. [Ayad Akhtar's play, Junk, does a far more thorough job of explaining the bond market fall - but I found that well-nigh incomprehensible - as I think anyone without an MBA would!].

I think a large part of the hoopla over this play was the over three-hour run-time - when people sit that long in a theatre, they want to feel their effort has been well-spent. I hope to one day watch the NT Live film adaptation of the play, and perhaps that will change my mind - but for now, a three-star disappointment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/th...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/201...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/202...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyabO...

[Jason]

I'm sure seeing a production of this would be amazing, however as far as the script itself goes, it's molding interesting, but there's no dramatic tension. With so little dialogue it reads more like a lecture than a play. I did find it interesting because I knew nothing about the history of Lehman Brothers, so I don't regret reading it, but is it a play? Meh.

[Paul Lyons]

A compelling play, for sure, and a somewhat unusual one. Can't say I loved Ben Power's adaptation of Stephano Massani's original play about the family history and rise and fall of the great financial institution, Lehman Brothers. The title "The Lehman Trilogy" is a bit of a misnomer, in that there does not appear to be a trilogy involved with the story itself. Instead, the play is specified to be formed by three men, and three men only...performing all of the parts.

Play is set up with the three original Lehman Brothers who came to the United States from Bavaria in the 19th century, and set up their first shop in Montgomery, Alabama. Brothers Henry, Emanuel and Mayer Lehman sold clothing down in the American South. Henry, the oldest, was the commanding, driving force, Emanuel was "The Arm," the daring one, and Mayer was the round potato, the mediator between the two.

As times changed, the business grew and involved from clothing to cotton, to cotton owners to cotton brokers, to plantation farm supplies, to the move to New York and Wall Street, to transitioning to becoming a bank, to growing into a worldwide corporation buying and trading money and making profit after profit. Through changing times, war, family squabbles, death, the stock market crash, marriages, births, advancing industry and technology, the Lehman Brothers business stayed afloat and bounced back with resilience and vigor...until the company toppled down in 2008, and was sold off.

Truthfully, I am not entirely sure if I liked "The Lehman Trilogy." Perhaps if I had seen the play, as opposed to reading it, I might feel different. Yet on paper, I found the writing and story presentation to be poetic and compelling in an academic-historical way, yet not at heart. Will have to see it sometime, to get a fuller sense of the play.

Nevertheless, on paper at least, "The Lehman Trilogy" is interesting, though I am uncertain what it really is about. Is about the price of progress and the decline of old values and tradition? It is about family, or Judaism in America? Could be about all of the above, or none of the above. I am uncertain.

[Josh]

The play is good, the production was better. My read is that the play wants to say that reinvention is a necessary and vital force in American capitalism, while being fundamentally destabilising over time. Every new generation knows the next new thing, and they know this better than the previous generation. Philip Lehman is right to shut out the older Lehmans, even if we feel the loss. Yet over time this openness to the newness has problematic consequences, and leads to the loss of rootedness, family, and tradition which makes life serious and meaningful. You similarly get this move into ever greater abstraction- away from being cotton to middlemen, to merchants of money, to trading insitutions. It's important that the root is at the start- there was never some Edenic state, people were always reinventing, even the original Lehmans changed their names and businesses, and argued over the nature of the business.

The production was a masterpiece.

[Lucas Christopher]

My favorite play ever i could gush about it for hours and hours and hours

[Steve Mayer]

As interesting to read as it was to watch.

[Quenton Cassidy]

Really interesting play. The bank itself was the central character, and its fraternal stewards made it deeply complex. I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it.

[Zachary]

"Our objective should be nothing more or less than a planet upon which no-one buys out of need. They buy out of instinct."

Wow this is a behemoth of a play. It was wildly entertaining watching the materials good of Lehman's original business (suits and cotton) slowly become abstracted and depersonalized over time as the monster morphs to credit swaps and then.... something about stocks? I kind of lost the plot toward the 3rd hour of the play which may be in part because I was having a headache and also in part because I don't have an MBA.

Sophia Nguyen in her review for the play wrote that "if, during one of this play’s two intermissions, you’re tempted to Google “causes of the 1929 crash” — something has gone wrong.". While I did relate to this confusion, perhaps this is just the natural result of capital becoming completely abstract? How could one tidily explain the crash of 1929 in a play without gross simplification? I'm not sure anybody had a definite understanding of the beast and maybe that confusion adds to the horror of the crash - makes it understandable why it would lead investors to suicide (unlike the play, in real life there wasn't a wave of suicides after the crash of 1929). Nobody seemed to understand it.

A decade after the crash in 1939, John Steinbeck I think worded the situation perfectly:
"something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it."

[Davide]

This was something of a let down. I had high expectations from all the awards buzz in 2022, but ultimately, I think the script proves that it was the production itself that was a major accomplishment. The story thrills in the exquisite feast of events it has to work with, and it's intriguing to be traced a broad-view history that led up to the collapse of Lehman. That said, the writing itself is very heavy-handed, with recursive slogans and morals forced on the audience in turns. There is a big problem, I think, with the way narrative time is deployed. The pre-1900 history of Lehman feels so robust and comprehensively built and considered while everything after Black Thursday in the play feels hurried and haphazard, propelling to the blip of 2008 that ends the play. A worthy document for further context around the history of Lehman but not necessarily a triumphant artwork.

[Davin Broadhurst]

Oh yeah give me ten years and I would LOVE to do anything in this show. Unfortunately, the entire thing is about capitalism.. and it doesn’t necessarily ever talk about the flaws of the system. Because the titular characters are the billionaire bank owners… there’s a bit of commentary when two scenes flip back and forth between stock brokers shooting themselves and having the Lehman’s getting married with a big party.. I’ll have to read it again to really discover the criticisms of capitalism because I think they’re there.. maybe a bit too subtle.

[David Smadja]

Nice success story of three brothers going after their American dream. I think it was ballsy to only have three 3 characters on scene and at the same time it was probably the best directional choice for making time jumps from 1844 to 2008

[Sophia]

Saw on Broadway - new favorite play. Reads like poetry & I literally couldn't put it down.

[Scott]

Poetic language tells this sweeping saga of three brothers and their descendants.

[Ellen Kress]

Powerful, playful, imaginative and quite epic. I’d be interested to see a staging of this show because of how many characters the three main actors must portray.

[Brian McCann]

A great read as well as an outstanding evening in theater. Reading the play allowed me to savor the lyrical quality of the script. Three cheers!!

[John Donohoe]

Genius. Better seen than read.
A great theatre work !