The Lehman Trilogy at The Lyttleton

The way Sam Mendes brings to life Stefano Massini’s epic play, adapted here at The Lyttleton by Ben Power, is inspired.  Using just three actors, but what a trio, we become privy to how Lehman Brothers turned into the Wall Street institution it was until its spectacular collapse in 2008.

I wasn’t totally sure if a 3½ hour play about a financial corporation was really my thing, but decided the cast and director were worth the gamble.  No need to worry, because rather than being a wordy blow-by-blow account of a bank’s demise, this is a very amusing and pacey synopsis of how and why the whole thing collapsed.

This play has a very unusual and interesting format.  It’s written in a kind of verse, the actors often direct their speeches to the audience and talk about themselves in the third person before moving into dialogue.  It is neither rhyme no prose so has more of an affinity to Greek drama, albeit lighter in tone.  Ben Power has to be given massive credit for succeeding so brilliantly in his massive task of creating this version out of the literal translation of the original, especially if you take into account that Stefano Massini’s drama originally ran for 5 hours and it took him 3½ years to write.  His reason for writing the play, which has since been translated into 11 languages and staged across the world, was his desire to find out how such a massive enterprise as Lehman’s collapsed so spectacularly. 

To this end, The Lehman Trilogy starts way back in the 1840’s and Henry Lehman’s (Simon Russell-Beale) arrival in America from Bavaria.  Settling in Montgomery, Alabama, he starts modestly by opening a general store (well actually a one-room shop selling cloth by the inch to those of very modest means).  Soon joined by his brother, Emanuel (Ben Miles) and then Mayer (Adam Godley), they soon move onto loaning money to the plantations, receiving payment in raw cotton which they sell on, at profit, to New York.  Thus the “middle man” is effectively born.   Eventually investing in coffee and railways, they prosper so well that their main commodity is money itself.  In Mendes’s production, the signage depicting the changing face of their business is written with marker pen on one of the glass walls of Es Devlin’s remarkable revolving glass box.  Likewise, the New York skyline, plantation fields and the various catastrophes that threaten their business along the way, but from which they cannily survive, is depicted on Luke Hall’s back video screen.

Just as the three actors portray every character from demure 19^th century Alabama girl to each and every subsequent Lehman family member, so they remain in their original black frock coats.  Very few props are used, but do include cardboard boxes like those used by Lehman employees to remove their belongings from their offices on the 15^th September 2008.  These boxes become a host of other things including towers and podiums; minimalism at its most effective.

But it’s the three actors and their director that ensure this impeccable production is such a joy to watch.  Simon Russell-Beale has never been better as the solidly respectable older brother, Henry and, never one to shirk from harnessing his female side, his transformation into various women is nothing short of brilliant.  With just the slightest of movements, inflections and voice, he can convince you he can be anybody doing anything.

Likewise, Adam Godley, when not portraying the patronised youngest brother, Mayer, plays a mean female   Then, by complete contrast transmogrifies into a fractious toddler and the entrepreneurial Bobbie, dancing as the stockmarket goes haywire.

Then we have Ben Miles, the calm and authoritative middle brother, Emanuel, who turns into various later members of the Lehman clan who are anything but.

The Lehman Trilogy has it all but pared down to the bare minimum.  For one who knows diddly-squat about banking and the like, I came away from the Lyttleton understanding a lot more, especially how easy it was for a family business initially conducting their business with the Jewish ethics they grew up with, ending up with no Lehman involved and ethics going out of the window.

Well worth seeing.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Noel Coward Theatre

Martin McDonagh once described his play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, as “a violent play that is wholeheartedly anti-violence”.  An addendum to this should read that it is also hilarious, both visibly and because the plot, albeit ‘off the wall’ and script are incomparable.

No-one can dispute that this is comedy at its blackest.  How could that not be the case when the story is based around Mad Padriac (Aidan Turner), the sole member of his own Irish National Liberation Army splinter group who was deemed too mad for the IRA.  That’s not to say that Padriac isn’t without compassion, it’s just that it’s only visible when concerning cats, and one cat in particular, namely “Wee Thomas”.  Currently being looked after by his father, Donny (Denis Conway), Wee Thomas is Padriac’s only friend.  Well aware of this, three INLA members incensed by Padriac’s splinter group and intent on wreaking their revenge, lure him back home by battering the aforementioned moggy to death.

The play opens with Padriac torturing a local drug dealer, James (Brian Martin) strung up by his legs, the better to have his toenails unceremoniously removed.  His ordeal is temporarily halted when a phone call informs his perpetrator that his “Wee Thomas” is in a poor state of health.  Brought to his knees with grief, Padriac is offered veterinary advice, involving ringworm pellets from his torture victim. It’s only on his return home that Padriac realises his cat is a lost cause and no amount of pellets of any description will resurrect him.  Time for revenge and the fear that grips Donny and his ginger-mulleted young pal, Davey (Chris Walley) on the immediate return of the former’s prodigal son is completely founded.  Despite their cunning plan of disguising a ginger cat by polishing him with black boot polish, Padriac smells a rat (well boot polish actually) and it’s time for them to meet their maker.  What follows is a blood fest, but don’t let that put you off.  It’s delivered in such a farcical, laugh out loud way that only those suffering from S.O.H.F. (sense of humour failure) or utter despondency that their beloved Poldark could turn out so malevolent will be shocked into an early exit from the theatre.

There is a nod to female character content in the form of Mairead (Charlie Murphy), Davey’s sister, but at the risk of upsetting the L.G.B.T. community, she’s not your normal girlie girl.  Her idea of stating the case for the cessation of slaughtering animals for food is to shoot out the eyes of cows!  After all, what farmer could sell a blind one!  She is also a passionate advocate for a free Ireland, so Padriac and his ideals are quite a draw. They’re both cut from the same cloth and their relationship, built on the shared passion of a splinter INLA group is likewise broken due to their shared passion of felines.

The entire play mercilessly highlights McDonagh’s mockery of the politics of revenge.  The terrorists are shown to be inept and full of sentimental self-righteousness, with more than a hint of the psychopath.  After all, Padriac is a man overwhelmed by grief over the death of his cat but has no compunction about killing his father.  He sighs, “All I ever wanted was an Ireland free .. Free for cats to roam about”.  And the script is littered with delightful understatement.  None more so than Donny’s line when bloody mayhem has ensued, “It’s incidents like this that does put the tourists off Ireland”.

Michael Grandage directs the cast with sure fired accuracy, ensuring that McDonagh’s script loses none of its bite.  It helps that all the actors are exemplary and that Christoper Oram’s set couldn’t be more ‘bog Ireland’ if it tried.  Aidan Turner, wild eyed and blood spattered, makes for an unnerving Padriac but one who is also strangely innocent.   Who knows what a character who utters the line “You never let bygones be bygones you” when talking to Christy whose eye he shot with a crossbow, might do next?  What a good move on his part to leave the Cornish Hills for a while and return to his homeland.  He really isn’t just a pretty face.

Chris Walley, the actor playing young Davey is superb.  His ‘biog’

of  just one previous TV/Film performance, as he has just graduated from RADA, will surely ratchet up after this turn as the hapless young Davey.  Oh and what a stroke of genius to furnish him with a pink bicycle!

Denis Conway is a master at delivering McDonagh’s off the cuff witticisms, whilst Charlie Murphy couldn’t be better as the passionate but flawed adolescent girl.  The INLA men, Will Irvine, Daryl McCormack and Julian Moore-Cook, also play their part in ensuring that whether the laughs are involuntary during a shocking bit or joyous from yet another brilliant quip, they’re there nonetheless.

The futility of all the violence eventually becomes clear, but as it’s a spoiler alert my lips are sealed.  Suffice it to say that like everything else about this production, it is brilliant.

Julie at The Lyttleton

Put simply, this updated version by Polly Stenham of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, didn’t do it for me.  It’s nothing to do with the acting, which is up to the mark, it’s the fact that the dramatic tension usually associated with this play isn’t there.

Stenham’s updated version has Julie (Vanessa Kirby) transported to modern day London. It’s her thirty something birthday and she’s celebrating with a party in the home she shares with her wealthy father.  He’s away, the only members of the household insitu are Jean (Eric Kofi Abrefa), the Ghanian chauffeur and his Brazilian fiancé Kristina (Thalissa Teixara) and drugs are freely flowing.  Julie, the ultimate poor little rich girl, has issues stemming from the death of her mother and regularly imbibes Xanax and Cocaine. This birthday bash is an excuse for her to go wild following a recent break-up.  As such, anything goes, including the chance to engage in a power game with Jean which ultimately ends in rough sex and the decision, albeit constantly changed, to run away together.

The trouble is, unlike the original play, this sexual encounter isn’t a massive deal. Yes, it means Kristina’s dignity and happiness is severely compromised, but in this day and age, sleeping with the staff of whatever nationality isn’t life shattering from anyone’s point of view and certainly shouldn’t bring about the ultimate conclusion viewed here.

Vanessa Kirby is great at showing the disturbed nature of the over indulged Julie and letting us glimpse the changing nature of her relationship with both Jean and Kristina.  At times overly pally and needy, whilst at others imperious and condescending, but never really interested in their lives or how they may be feeling.  Thalissa Teixeira is very affecting as the deceived Kristina and illicits our sympathy in a way that Julie never really can.  Meanwhile Eric Kofi Abrefa expertly conveys his conflicting emotions of desire and distaste towards his employer’s daughter.

Another sticking point is Tom Scutt’s design. The Lyttleton stage is basically cut in half.  The top shows the party in full, somewhat contrived swing, whilst the kitchen in the bottom half has Jean and Kristina bustling around making sure everything’s in order when the boss gets back.  The throbbing base from above is distracting, whilst the kitchen area is far too large for the intimate exchanges between the couple.  Strindberg himself realised his play required a “small stage and small auditorium” which begs the question, why stage it in a theatre which is anything but.

A reason for Stenham updating Miss Julie was to apparently investigate the hypocrisies of middle-class liberals towards their immigrant staff and she would probably have been better writing a play to this effect from scratch.  Maybe those not conversant with the original might enjoy this update more.  It just isn’t for me.