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.