While some current smaller-scale shows, like Is this a Room?, lose a degree of intimacy in their transfers from Off-Broadway to on, The Lehman Trilogy undergoes a metamorphosis in the opposite direction. This Italian play about the American financial empire played a limited run in the cavernous Park Avenue Armory after a smash London engagement at the National Theater. Now, set designer Es Devlin’s huge cube of a revolving set fits neatly into the Nederlander Theater and provides a memorable experience which is both vast and up-close.
Stefano Massini’s three-and-a-half-hour epic, adapted by Ben Power, traces the trajectory of the Lehmans from immigrant merchants in 1840s Alabama to pioneers in the field of investments in the 20th century to the firm’s 2008 bankruptcy. Massini doesn’t take a pro- or anti-capitalism stance, but this sweeping history of one family and the parallel growth and convulsion of the American economic system is fascinating theater—particularly as directed with startling imagination by Sam Mendes and with an army of characters, male and female, played with consummate skill by Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley, and Adrian Lester (taking over the roles plays by Ben Miles in London and Off-Broadway). Lester fits snugly into the three-man ensemble, playing the more aggressive Lehmans with force and virility. Godley remains a delight, particularly as the innovative Bobby Lehman who dances into his grave and as a series of prospective wives for the exacting Philip Lehman.
Beale remains the outstanding member of this small, amazing cast, creating an array of sharp, believable portraits from the solemn Henry to the computer-like Philip to the flirtatious Ruth (Bobby’s unhappy wife) to plantation owners to cotton dealers to Greek restauranteurs.
