John Heffernan, Howard W. Overshown, Aaron Krohn in The Lehman Trilogy 2024. Photo by Kevin BerneJohn Heffernan, Aaron Krohn and Howard W Overshown initially play Henry, Mayer and Emmanuel, the first Lehman's to arrive in the USA from Bavaria. The actors go on to play the Lehman sons and grandsons (and, less endearingly, wives and daughters) throughout the years. Heffernan gets the best material, but all three are strong performances. Music is the fourth protagonist of the play, and Cat Beveridge provides impressive piano accompaniment for the whole show.
Translated by Ben Power, Stefano Massini’s mammoth play (it’s three hours long, excluding two intervals) is delightfully verbose and trusting of its audience to keep up with its wordiness and themes: industrialisation, globalisation, the development of railways, and the impact of technology. Meanwhile, the play also examines family expectations and dynamics, and the changing importance of the Lehman family’s Jewish identity. Massini successfully weaves these themes in and out of the story. This is all the more successful due to director Sam Mendes’ use of a minimalist set (by Es Devlin), using four moving glass walls to portray a variety of settings.
The play’s second act is overly-long, and the third act loses some of the earlier sections’ sharpness. The play could also do with more input from the Lehman women. However, Massini and Mendes have created an ambitious, dense and sweeping production, worthy of this return to the West End.
At Gillian Lynne Theatre until 5 January 2025.
