{"id":10181,"date":"2019-06-13T15:05:12","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T15:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/?p=10181"},"modified":"2019-07-03T15:08:57","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T15:08:57","slug":"the-lehman-trilogy-on-the-west-end-incredible-acting-in-an-early-draft-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/2019\/06\/13\/the-lehman-trilogy-on-the-west-end-incredible-acting-in-an-early-draft-play\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lehman Trilogy on the West End: Incredible Acting in an Early Draft Play"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
It\u2019s Theatre Thursday!\nToday\u2019s show is The Lehman Trilogy, currently playing in <\/em>London<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>West End<\/em> at the\nPiccadilly Theatre until August 31. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When you walk away from a 3+ hour play thinking, \u201cwhy didn\u2019t\nthey accomplish anything with that amount of time?\u201d, you know something\u2019s\nwrong. With The Lehman Trilogy<\/em>,\nostensibly about the Lehman Brothers global financial services firm but mostly\nabout the family dynamics of the previous generations, you learn zero about\nwhat this company did in the modern age. You learn tons, tons about the three\nfounding brothers and their marriages and their interactions with their kids\n(fictionalized of course) and how the kids acted in school and who their kids\nmarried and why\u2026but literally nothing about why this behemoth financial company\nfailed in the 2008 market crash. And so this shockingly well-received play\nfeels like an early draft that needs work. If you wanted to write a family\ndrama, why frame it as being about the Lehman Brothers? Why not just write a\nfamily drama instead of suggesting it\u2019ll have to do with the financial world at\nall? They could have easily swapped this family for any other family\u2019s story\nand had the same effect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps that was the goal of Italian writer Stefano Massini:\nto show the inner workings of the Lehman family\u2019s personal lives and struggles\ninstead of sharing any substance about their infamous company. But then I ask\nwith even more urgency, why?! What do we care why billionaires had to divorce\ntheir wives, or why one billionaire spent a lot of time betting on horses? Were\nwe supposed to relate to their troubles, because I don\u2019t. Why choose the\nLehmans if not to talk about the last incarnation of the company and its 2008 collapse?\nThe huge financial crash we all lived through felt like the elephant in the\nroom for Acts II and III, like \u2018um, guys, why aren\u2019t we talking about that, or\nseeing what\u2019s going to cause it?\u2019 It\u2019s such a strange choice, to focus the play\non what the various Lehman generations were personally like yet to skip over\neverything relevant to our lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I discuss play length frequently, because it\u2019s so\ninteresting to see what different people can do with different amounts of time.\nDespite what you\u2019d assume from the writing on this site, in my regular life I\ncherish efficiency. With more than 3 hours, you assume a play can make its\npoint, yet here it was so much wasted time. We had endless jokes about the\nyoungest brother being a potato; we had too much time wasted on one of the\ndescendant\u2019s annoying wife; we had a long, slow list of names of bankers\n(unrelated to the characters) who committed suicide; we had literally 10\nminutes of Adam Godley doing the twist through the 20th<\/sup> century,\ninstead of telling us what the company was doing to bring about its downfall.\nThis play feels like the second draft, a work in progress that needs a\ndramaturge to help find its purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clearly the play wanted to be about the family, especially the\nthree founding brothers \u2013 and the part that was about them, the first act, was\nthe most compelling part. In the beginning, they managed to successfully\nportray the brothers\u2019 dynamics while also showing what the actual company was\nlike at the start, what kinds of financial decisions they made and why. So it\ncan be done. (And as we\u2019ve seen in superior plays like Enron<\/em>, you can have interesting characters (who actually interact\nand don\u2019t just narrate to the audience, a wearying trend) while simultaneously\nteaching about the financial industry, the company\u2019s role in it, and how it all\nwent to shit. Enron<\/em> even had\ndinosaurs help us learn.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then the following two acts feel like a battle between\nthe playwright\u2019s objective \u2013 wanting to stick with the family biography \u2013 and everyone\nelse\u2019s expectation that the action was \u2018supposed to\u2019 get to the later\nincarnations of the company as a financial giant and, of course, the 2008 crash.\nI kept thinking \u2018surely now they will get to the relevant part? Surely\u2026now?\u2019 By\nthe time it did, it was too late to do anything worthwhile, and so they simply didn\u2019t.\nThey didn\u2019t really mention what the work was even like in modern times. In\nfact, the last 5 minutes of the show felt like a mad dash of the entire\ncreative team to the finish line, like everyone was shouting \u201cOH SHIT WE ONLY\nHAVE A FEW MINUTES LEFT AND WE\u2019RE IN 1980 QUICK LET\u2019S SAY DECADES ARE PASSING\nAND THEN OH NO IT\u2019S 2008 WE CRASH THE END.\u201d I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s the ending\nverbatim. It felt that sudden, that unplanned. The surprise of a dozen otherwise\nunused actors standing in a boardroom sadly at the end felt equally misguided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have to believe that other critics are raving about this play entirely because of the acting. With the stellar trio of Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles, and Adam Godley, the acting is absolutely top-notch. Sam Mendes inventively directs them not just as the three founding Lehmans, but as their wives, their kids, their grandkids, as they seemingly effortlessly weave in and out of various personas with the bat of an eye, a slight change in voice. Their acting skills were as impressive as it gets, but they deserve a play that delivers too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n INFORMATION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Lehman Trilogy runs just under 3 hours and 20 minutes,\nwith two 20-minute intervals (which is the best way to do long shows). As is\nthe despicable trend among London\ntheatres these days, they held the curtain for latecomers to arrive. MY DUDES.\nStop holding the g-d curtain for latecomers. If they\u2019re late, let them wait\ntill the late seating time. If there is no late seating, then actually respect\nyour own policy and don\u2019t forking let the latecomers dictate the schedule for\neveryone else. It\u2019s so rampant now, this issue, that we all may as well take\nour sweet ass time getting to the theatre 5-10 minutes late because it doesn\u2019t\nmatter anymore, there are no rules, they will hold it for you. APPARENTLY.\nSMDH. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was also one of the smokiest rooms I\u2019ve ever been in, and\nI was seated in the stalls. This is because the main lobby\u2019s entrance doors\nwere open and there\u2019s a bar next door and no staff gives a good g-d that people\nwere smoking literally in the doorways, to such an extent that the smoke\ntraveled through all the stairs and hallways and into the stalls at full\nstrength. That is inexcusable. Aren\u2019t there RULES?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s Theatre Thursday! Today\u2019s show is The Lehman Trilogy, currently playing in London\u2019s West End at the Piccadilly Theatre until August 31. When you walk away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"yoast_head":"\n