Epic, Compelling ‘The Lehman Trilogy’ at Gulfshore Playhouse

The cast of The Lehman Trilogy at Gulfshore Playhouse. (Photo by Nick Adams)

By Nancy Stetson

Just call The Lehman Trilogy the Walt Whitman of plays: it is large and contains multitudes.

Those multitudes are all performed by three actors whose characters are born, grow, age, die, and give way to a new generation.

The Lehman Trilogy, a multiple Tony Award-winning play written by Stefano Massini and adapted by Ben Power, tells the story of the Lehman brothers. It starts in 1844, when Hajum Lehman (whose name was Americanized to Henry) arrives in America, and ends in 2008, when Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest US investment bank, goes bankrupt, contributing to the Great Recession.

It’s an audacious piece of writing and theater, to tell the story of multiple generations over such a long span of time, using only three actors.

And it’s probably one of the best things you’ll see onstage this season.

This Gulfshore Playhouse production in Naples is the perfect marriage of script, actors and director. (Jeffrey Binder, who creates magic onstage.) It’s performed in the Struthers Studio, a small and intimate space (through March 2.)

We’re introduced to the brothers one by one. Henry (Ian Merrill Peakes), who is the first to come to America. (Audiences may recognize the actor from his recent role in Gulfshore Playhouse’s “Maytag Virgin.”) He opens a general store in Alabama. His blustery brother Emanuel (Geoffrey Cantor) arrives three years later. And then, in another three years, Mayer (Cody Nickell) shows up, the baby of the trio and the peacemaker. (Audiences may remember Nickell, a former Artistic Associate at the theater, portraying all the characters in “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.”)

Henry, called “the head,” is always right, while Emanuel, “the arm” of the family, is volatile and combustible. It’s Mayer who steps in to smooth things over between them. The three figure out how to broker cotton, rather than just sell cotton goods, and they never look back.

You cheer on the three immigrant brothers who want to make something of themselves in this new world, until the story becomes one of greed.

Peakes is even-handed and responsible as Henry, the older brother, then cold and cut-throat as Philip Lehman, Emanuel’s son. Philip has a keen business sense, and even finds his own bride by making up a list of “appropriate attributes” and scoring each candidate. Nickell amusingly portrays each woman: shy, coy, giggly, scholarly. It is simply a business transaction for Philip. (Women get short shrift in this world – they are seen as acquisitions or accessories.)

Nickell plays Philip’s son, Bobby, who is more interested in art and horses than business. He is perpetually astounded and bewildered by the world.

And it is Cantor, originally the fiery Emanuel, who later, as a partner at Lehman Brothers, gives the bone-chilling speech in which he declares: “Our objective should be/nothing more or less/than a planet/upon which no one buys out of need./They buy out of instinct./They will give us money they don’t have/for things they don’t need./They will simply buy.”

The three actors, in addition to playing multiple characters, also provide narration and description, as they perform on a minimalist stage with black brick walls and pillars. (Baron E. Pugh) With the actors’ verbal descriptions, lighting (Graham Zellers) and sound (Lindsay Jones), the setting transforms into a general store, a boardroom, a New York City dock. A simple rope and the sound of galloping horses turns the stage into a racetrack. An abacus counts the hundreds of thousands killed in the Civil War.

And to show the progression of time, each current year is written on a crate, a sign, a pillow. Director Binder, cast, and creative crew demonstrate how easy it is to transform a stage, to take us through decades and generations and locales.

Watching “The Lehman Trilogy” is a time commitment – it runs three hours and 30 minutes, including two intermissions. But it is time well-rewarded. It never drags, is never boring or dull. Each scene is a gem. And the protean cast consistently amazes throughout. It’s also surprisingly poetic and lyrical for a play about finance and investing.

Though it’s about the Lehman Brothers, it is so much more: a play about fathers and sons, about what we learn (or don’t learn) from previous generations. It’s about striving to better oneself and about greed. It’s about the immigrant experience and the people who come here to make a new life.

This Gulfshore Playhouse production of The Lehman Trilogy is a theatrical tour de force that is not to be missed.

The Lehman Trilogy plays at the Struthers Studio at Gulfshore Playhouse’s Baker Theatre and Education Center, 100 Goodlette-Frank Road, Naples. Tickets are $39- $129 and can be purchased by calling (239) 261-7529 or going to www.gulfshoreplayhouse.org.