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Show: The Lehman Trilogy
Society: National Theatre (professional)
Venue: Gillian Lynne Theatre, 166 Drury Lane, Holborn, London WC2B 5PW
Credits: By Stefano Massini, adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes
Type: Sardines
Author: Susan Elkin
Performance Date: 09/02/2023
The Lehman Trilogy
Susan Elkin | 10 Feb 2023 22:52pm
L-R…Michael-Balogun. Hadley Fraser, Nigel Lindsay. Photo: MarkDouet
This sort of thing comes along only once or twice in a lifetime – if you’re lucky. And if anything Sam Mendes’s 2018 production, directed in the West End by Zoe Ford Burnett is even better now than when I first saw it four years ago and I really didn’t think that was possible.
And as so often with staggeringly original art, it starts from a very basic premise. It’s simply a biographical, chronological account of a family company from the moment Henry Lehman arrives in New York from Bavaria in 1844 to the phone call which finally brings down the global company in 2008, victim of the financial crisis.
Trilogy? It gives us three brothers in a three act play: a sort of glorious theatrical triptych. And the story telling is just one of this play’s great strengths. Three actors unfold this epic playing all roles including wives, children, hard-nosed American businessmen and a lot more. It’s seamless, slick and fast paced as each of them hops in and out of a third person narrator role. It could so easily be confusing but never is – and that’s quite something for a play which runs for 3 hours and 20 minutes.
We are so used to seeing Nigel Lindsay in TV crime dramas where he usually presents as an ordinary bloke but turns out to be villainous, that it’s easy to forget just what a remarkable actor he is. Here as Henry, he is sardonic and funny but with lots of Jewish gravitas. He also hilariously (there’s masses of humour in this show) plays a whole raft of other roles changing sex by raising an eyebrow and shedding 50 years with the twitch of a hand. His earnest, young Philip Lehman monologue got a spontaneous round of applause at one point in the performance I saw. It’s like watching a masterclass in acting.
Michael Balogun delights as Emmanuel Lehman arguing with his elder brother but eventually persuading him to move on from selling cotton in Alabama to establishing the company in New York. He’s also very strong – when the chronology moves on and we progress down the generations – as Herbert Lehman who leaves the company to go into politics.
Hadley Fraser has a gift for sensitive versatility too. As the youngest brother, Mayer, he is the buffer between the other two joking often about his “Potato” nickname and pulling up the collar of his coat to transform himself into someone else.
All this is immaculately staged on different sections of Es Devlin’s ingenious set, a revolving, glassy cubic island in a big space. It’s a modern office within which the 150 year story is recounted with few props – just piles of ever moving document boxes and a bunch of flowers. Behind it is a very effective, projected curved skyline. Luke Halls’s video design delivers New York at various points in its history, fire, sunset, office blocks, nightmares and much more.
The show is accompanied on piano (Yshani Perinpanayagam) at the front of the auditorium, stage left. She works very hard and plays beautifully although I’m not sure this adds much to what is already a stunning show other than during the very funny scene when Babette Lehman (Nigel Lindsay) is giving her children piano lessons. However, if you’re going to include background music then it’s a fine, enlightened decision to have it live.
I think you should beg, borrow or steal (if you have to) to see this electrifying show.