Horatio Algerniski

 “The Lehman Trilogy” a play by Stefano Massini, adapted by Ben Power, Guthrie Theater, 2024

This is the story of most of the history of Lehman Brothers, written by an Italian playwright from Firenze. Massini’s play is both an epic tale of inventiveness and hard work and how it all came to naught in 2008. The explanation of that failure is only sketched, involving the early, rapacious trading of a non-Lehman CEO, Lew Glucksman, which led to the firm’s sale to others and its later failure under Dick Fuld. The role of fraudulent, subprime mortgage bonds and credit default swaps is invisible, nor the drama behind the joint decision to tank Lehman. This is because this is really a family story of the original 3 Lehman brothers from Bavaria and their three sons, one of whom became a politician under Roosevelt. When the Lehman family members are dead and gone towards the end, the play loses interest in the firm.

The Brothers & Sons In Turmoil

This is not an anti-capitalist story unless you are already disposed to that view. It is not an expose of Lehman’s failures in 2008. In a way you are cheering for the brother’s success, which implies its own message. Every playgoer will see in it what they will.

The brothers Lehman - Henry (Heyum), Mayer and Emmanuel - first settled in Montgomery, Alabama in 1844 and created the firm name in 1850. Lehman Brothers started as a dry goods and textile store, then morphed into a cotton dealer and broker. Mayer owned 7 slaves and the firm expanded its reach, ultimately contracting with 24 slave plantations for cotton to send to the mills up north. Henry died and Emmanuel moved to New York to be closer to the main center of cotton trading in the city. The Civil War broke out in 1860 and their business was heavily damaged.

After the war Mayer followed his brother to New York and they both invest in the coffee trade, leaving cotton behind. Emmanuel’s son Philip points them to investing in railroads around the same time his father dies. Philip switched the firm from a commodities broker to a financial behemoth, specializing in IPOs and private investment trusts. From then on, under the leadership of Robert Lehman, son of Philip, they specialized in investing in ‘the new thing’ – tobacco, automobiles, oil, movies, military contracts, computers, then pure asset trading – i.e. money>money+. In a way it is the record of U.S. capitalism. Through all this they weathered the stock market crash of 1929, as Robert knew that if they did not join the first wave of bankruptcies, the government would step in. Robert was the last Lehman on the board, dying in 1969. After that the play gets bored with itself and speeds up.

That is the capsule. The play was adapted to use only three male actors in 2018. It is performed by them playing dozens of roles, changing their voice and a bit of clothing, addressing the audience, dying and being reborn as someone else. The cast performance is bravura, given the length of the play, size of the cast and the difficulty of playing so many people. The play lasts 3.5 hours, with two intermissions, so it is a bit of a slog and needs some editing.

The director thinks it is a history. As we know history is not just ‘history.’ It focuses on the Lehman’s Jewish roots in Bavaria where Henry’s father was a businessman, roots that were carried over to the ‘new’ world. In a way it is the Horatio Alger story of immigrants gaining wealth status, though ultimately ending in failure, unknown to the brothers and sons themselves. It reflects changes in U.S. capitalism from closed family firms to anodyne corporations, from mercantile capitalism to finance capitalism, from immigrant success stories to Americanized children, from small businesses to giant international firms, some too big to fail and some not. These developments are not news but they do reflect the increasing dominance of a huge system over individual gumption. The overall sweep and sadness of this play hint at something beyond that – that even gigantic human efforts in our short time on this planet are ultimately failures, as history and time march on. That is probably the humanist point Massini was trying to make.

The audience was mostly retired, with middle-aged people and a smattering of young people. The play is housed in the beautiful confines of the Wuertle thrust stage which does not have a bad seat. The set is simple and changed 3 times in minor ways, always featuring a carpet seemingly of cotton, torn ticker tape or snow. I can’t say much more than that.

The Cultural Marxist / October 16, 2014