A smash hit in London and New York, "The Lehman Trilogy" is now on stage in a definitive production at TimeLine Theatre. Written by Stefano Massini, adapted by Ben Power, and co-directed by Nick Bowling and Vanessa Stalling, it's easy to see why this Tony-winning tale of an unimaginably successful Bavarian immigrant family has enthralled audiences. (The run has already been extended through November 26 at Broadway in Chicago's Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place).
Lights up on a stage covered in boxes, desks, chairs, phones, and screens, the whole space resembles a giant office (due to Collette Pollard’s smart design). Henry Lehman (played brilliantly by Mitchell J. Fain) stands at the edge of a platform, spotlight on his face. He addresses the audience, re-telling the character’s arrival to New York from Bavaria in third person, in a lyrical style that resembles a novel. The whole play is structured as such: the actors do more telling than showing, and narrate the action before embodying it, creating a sort of Brechtian distance between stage and audience. This seems to work in the plays favor, for the most part, as the narration is infused with humor, poetry, and information.
Soon enough, the actor embodies the first Lehman brother to arrive in the United States, gains an accent, and compares America to a music box. As a twinkling melody begins to play, Henry Lehman steps down and begins to set up his first shop in Alabama.
Shortly after, the two other brothers come into the picture. Henry becomes the head of the trio, while Emanuel (Anish Jethmalani) is described as the arm, and Mayer (Joey Slotnick), the youngest, works as the middleman between them. We watch the brothers negotiate and grow their business, adapting to an everchanging America, going from fabric to cotton to banking. The three actors play not only the brothers, but every other costumer, partner, wife, and child- sporting an impressive array of accents and physicalities. Each character has quirks of their own, which helps engage the audience and balances the amount of narration. Phillip, for instance, who is Emanuel’s son, is particularly comical. A neurotic boy from a young age, it is clear that he is destined to lead the Lehman Brothers Corporation. The audience laughs as a 16-year-old Phillip negotiates eloquently with United Railways, as his father watches aghast.
The design certainly helps bring the show to life, lights and sound and costume working together to take the audience on a journey that spans over a century. The simplicity of the set, lights, and sound, generally more suggestive than prescriptive, allows time to move forward fast, actors to shapeshift in the blink of an eye, and progress to hit the world of the play like a cannonball.
In a visually astonishing sequence, the American civil war is recreated on stage, through the simple use of explosion sounds, flickering lights, and papers thrown high into the air. This level of theatricality, along with the fascinating family dynamics and exploration of assimilation and loss of culture, lets the play move away from lecture and towards entertainment.
It comes as no surprise that capitalism is intertwined with all aspects of our daily lives, but seeing a group of men sitting around a table and deciding to introduce the idea of marketing onto American society, and to make buying an instinct rather than a need, that realization becomes more obvious than ever. Both a short history of 20th century American economy, and an intergenerational story of a Jewish family working towards the American dream, “The Lehman Trilogy” is highly recommended for any theatre lover with an interest in historical work.
