The rise and fall of a banking dynasty – The Lehman Trilogy theatre review

A dull night at the theatre can leave the audience members with a memory only of the overpriced wine at the interval. The truly great plays, the all-time classics, no matter their productions, are open to a wide-ranging discussion.

Hamlet could be viewed as a revenge thriller, a family potboiler, a ghost story, a twisted rom-com gone wrong, a meditation on procrastination or on mental health or the weirdness of the Danish royal family, an action flick ahead of its time with added iambic pentameter, the ultimate actor’s workout, all of the above or none of the above. That’s up to you, really.

The Cherry Orchard, Miss Julie, Waiting for Godot are open to the same kind of interpretations, discussions and theatrical remixes.

Few would sit through Vladimir and Estrogon’s babblings and then ask for their money back because (spoiler alert) Godot never showed up.

So, Stefano Massini’s 2013 play The Lehman Trilogy, which this week announced its transfer to Broadway, after three months at the National Theatre, is about Lehman Brothers. And it isn’t.

It’s also about the three Bavarian Jews and their successors who came to found what would be the USA’s fourth biggest investment bank. It’s about the promise of America. It’s about geography too, as the brothers leave Bavaria one-by-one, settle in Alabama before the lure of New York beckons. It’s about New York, New York (so big they built it twice and then built some more).

What else does it cover in its three hours and 20 minutes? Global expansion. Family dynamics, both the brothers and then Philip Lehman (Emmanuel’s son and the first chairman of the bank). The method of trade which went from hardware to cotton, to coffee, to trains, to transportation, to money, to trading itself leading to the inevitable conclusion.

It’s about identity (Chaim Lehman renames himself Henry on arrival in the US in 1844, brother Mendel becomes Emmanuel) and status (Philip, Emmanuel’s son and the bank’s first chairman, chooses a bride from eight based on social suitability he’s selected in his written journal). It’s about the thin distinction between grafters and grifters when it comes to making a deal, and the kinds of personality required to pass as both.

It is also a right old yarn.

As well as that, like the aforementioned Hamlet, The Lehman Trilogy provides a pretty extensive workout for the three leads. Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley are all exceptional, each playing every part on stage including the three brothers, their wives and children and a few more characters besides.

What the play isn’t about is what made Lehman Brothers global headline news in 2008. The 1929 crash is covered in much greater depth than the bank’s later collapse into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Perhaps that’s fair enough. The Lehman dynasty had been usurped by other traders and investors within the bank by then. The recent history of Wall Street and City of London has been well-covered in documentaries (The Smartest Men In The Room), drama (HBO/Sky Atlantic’s Too Big To Fail), films (Margin Call, The Big Short), plays (Lucy Prebble’s Enron) and umpteen books (including those by Michael Lewis, and this site’s editor, about RBS’s Sir Fred Goodwin, Making It Happen).

Again it is open to interpretation. Most opera buffs will not hear a word said against Wagner’s Ring Cycle while others think, that at 15 hours, it could do with a bit of trimming. In fairness to Wagner (if you’ll forgive this decidedly non-woke sentiment), that did take 26 years to write.

Therefore, if you’re deterred by 200 minutes in your seat watching a banking saga, based on a translation by the National’s deputy Artistic Director Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes, bear in mind the 150 years of American history it covers.

It is a measure of how good the Lehman Trilogy is that it didn’t feel long enough.