This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
“The Lehman Trilogy,” a three-hour telling of the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers financial firm and its founding family, was selected for Theatrical Outfit’s season specifically because it is complex material, according to artistic director Matt Torney.
“It’s really, really, really, really, really hard,” said Torney, who is directing the show. “Part of my mission as an artistic director is to give amazing artists in Atlanta stuff that really shows what they can do. I love shooting for the moon, like last year’s ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.’ Let’s do big, difficult and challenging stuff — because this city is packed to the brim with amazing artists.”
In Ben Powers’ adaptation of original writer Stefano Masini’s script, three actors portray members of many generations of the immigrant Jewish family as their empire grows with America. The just-opened play, which won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2022, continues through March 2.
Credit: Photo by Casey Gardner Ford
Credit: Photo by Casey Gardner Ford
The three actors tackling the challenges of the play are Brian Kurlander, Eric Mendenhall and Andrew Benator, playing Henry, Emanuel and Mayer Lehman, respectively. Additionally, they continue to embody the characters’ descendants within the financial company as years pass within the story, and hints of the original characters remain onstage. No other performers are in the play.
“Instead of the double helix of DNA, this story is like the triple helix of the three Lehman brothers (who) are rotating or spiraling through their own history,” Torney said. “From the moment they step off the boat in New York to the moment that the bank collapses in 2008, there’s this series of connections, cell divisions, repetitions, echoes. So the three original brothers — the genesis of this story — are present throughout the entire thing. And they’re always kind of haunting it, in a way.”
Kurlander’s character, Henry, is the head of the family and the first to arrive in America. The opening of the play is just him alone, delivering a monologue for the first 12 pages of the script.
“As the brothers come into America, we use the Bavarian dialects sparingly here and there as they speak to one another, giving the essence of the immigrant story,” Kurlander said. “It’s essential to embody that journey, revealing what that’s like — to go from a stranger in a strange land to starting the ball rolling on what would become the epic immigrant story of creating this company.”
The play also focuses upon the religion of the family and how their faith changes over time.
“I told my family that I had to learn as much Hebrew for this play as I did for my bar mitzvah,” Kurlander said.
Theatrical Outfit partnered with The Breman Museum to assure that Jewish tradition and history were properly represented. The two organizations partnered on last season’s “Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski,” which also starred Benator.
“They really helped, particularly in the preproduction process, understand how to put this together and the right tone to strike,” Torney said. “Most productions of this play do not prioritize Jewish artists and do not prioritize partnerships with Jewish cultural organizations. I’m proud we are doing that because it just opens up a much broader canvas of nuance in terms of cultural identity in American history.”
Mendenhall, playing Emanuel primarily, said “The Lehman Trilogy” is one of the most difficult scripts he has ever done.
“The most challenging thing is that you’re playing so many different roles in so many different voices,” he said. “With Emanuel specifically, you’re playing the person that is the strength and the brute force. You have to find the nuance when bringing that to life. What does that look like, when you’re coming against a brother who may be a little smarter than you or who can see things a little bit better than you can? You’re the one who’s doing, doing, doing.”
Though the financial story is at the center of the action, Torney said the play is not a celebration of the Lehmans as heroic figures.
“This is not a play that says, ‘Look at these great men,’” he said.
The Lehman legacy has changed over centuries, said Torney, who believes a message of the play is that no one is in complete control of their impact upon the world. Time only moves in one direction.
“I think this idea of American history as acceleration is really fascinating,” he said. “This is how things occur; everything speeds up. The generations that follow don’t believe the same things you do. Things quickly cascade out of control. It’s a lot of crisis response, reacting to things as they come. At the center are human beings attempting to do human things — striving. There’s something strangely moving about that.”
THEATER PREVIEW
“The Lehman Trilogy”
Through March 2 at Theatrical Outfit. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. $15-$54. 84 Luckie St. NW, Atlanta. 678-528-1500, theatricaloutfit.org.
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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, “Impacted,” was published by The Story Plant.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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