The word “storytelling” – hijacked by political strategists, brand consultants and marketing gurus – is becoming so prevalent it risks losing all meaning. But if you want to see storytelling in its truest form then you could do worse than take a seat for The Lehman Trilogy. In director Sam Mendes’s transfixing production, which premiered in 2018, three men in dark suits – the Lehman brothers – stand in a glass box and speak directly to the audience, narrating their tale. It is great theatre at its most untheatrical.
The story is epic in the original sense: its heroes perform extraordinary feats. The Lehman brothers were poor German-Jewish migrants from rural Bavaria who settled in Alabama in the 1840s and opened a small general store. Their business ingenuity and success as cotton traders led them through the Civil War, to New York, and ultimately to the creation of a powerful and highly profitable investment bank. Lehman Brothers helped to shape a global financial structure and then, in 2008, almost destroyed it.
This production was formed through a process of reduction. The original play by the Italian dramatist Stefano Massini was five hours long and had a large cast: Mendes and the writer Ben Power simmered it down to three hours and three roles, giving the writing a clarity and elegance that is complemented by the charisma and rapport of the actors. As the eldest brother Henry, Leighton Pugh (superbly understudying for John Heffernan) possesses the kinetic energy of American opportunity, which at times even infects the grounded Emanuel (Howard W Overshown) and charming Mayer (Aaron Krohn).
The actors become other characters as the play progresses, fluidly switching gender and age: Krohn is a one-man comic masterclass as a series of female suitors for Emanuel’s punctilious son Philip. Meanwhile, Es Devlin’s minimalist boardroom set rotates, and Nick Powell’s score, performed live by a solo pianist, marks historical time.
Here is a story of family, immigration, ambition, capitalism, America. And this is how to tell it.
The Lehman Trilogy
Gillian Lynne Theatre, London, WC2
Until 5 January 2025
[See also: The National’s modern Coriolanus]
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This article appears in the 16 Oct 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Make or Break