A tragic fairy-tale of New York
It lasts well over three hours, is in three parts, spans 170 years and tells nothing less than the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers, the American investment bank whose collapse on Sept 15 2008 was the first big spasm of the still reverberating global financial crisis. Only audiences with a thorough understanding of the subprime mortgage industry need apply, you might think. But in fact, this isn’t a hydra-headed, David Hare-style lesson in economic nuance but a lean three-hander in which the hubristic history of American capitalism takes on the deceptive charm of a folk tale.
Ben Power’s new English-language adaptation of Stefano Massini’s play, which has been performed across Europe, has a flashy creative team: it’s directed by Sam Mendes and stars Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles as the original Lehmans, Bavarian Jews who arrived in America during the 1840s and set up a fabric shop in Montgomery. The evolution of their business into a 21st-century global financial services monster is recounted in the rhythmic form of an epic poem, as though the story of these immigrant brothers is an American foundation myth – which, to some extent of course, it is.
It’s also a story of a ruthless ability to exploit potential growth markets. Before long this devout trio in immaculate black frock-coats are buying raw cotton direct from plantations and selling it in New York. They have become “middle men”, as youngest brother Mayer (Godley) explains to the father of the woman he wants to marry, proudly. They invest in coffee, in railways and, after falling in love with zeros, in money itself.
As the workings of capitalism become more and more like a magic trick (in Wall Street, they no longer deal in the material object of iron or coal, only in the word “iron” or “coal”, observes Mayer, as early as 1881), so the Jewish cultural fabric from which the original brothers are cut frays – the death of Henry Lehman (Beale) in 1855 is marked by seven days of sitting shiva; Mayer’s is marked by sitting three. Son Philip (also played by Beale with delicious, sociopathic singlemindedness) gets three minutes and, when the last Lehman, Bobby (Godley, all chilly messianic serenity) dies in 1969, without an heir, the bank has no time to stop for any mourning at all.
Beale, Miles and Godwin narrate their own story and, often very amusingly, play the other characters in it, meaning that, as the years roll by, the three brothers, even while voicing sons, grandsons and board members, are still present, like phantom custodians of a once humble dream. As in a fairy-story, certain phrases are repeated, like articles of faith – the brothers’ first office in Montgomery has a “door handle that sticks”; their first New York one is at “119 Liberty Street”. Jewish ritual and Talmudic scripture help drive the declamatory, sometimes incantatory rhythms, as though what we are hearing is a form of prayer, of the most ironic sort.
Mendes’s somewhat relentlessly monochrome production plays out in a rotating modern glass office, framed by changing black and white footage of America: the Atlantic Ocean, the Alabama cotton plantations; a rapidly growing New York. As the story moves through the 20th century, through the Wall Street crash, which Lehman Brothers ( just) survives, the fairy-tale curdles into a nightmare – Bobby madly dances himself to death in front of spinning footage of the stock exchange. After this, the remaining years pass by quickly, skating at tremendous speed over the most recent events. You might, in the end, learn little about subprime mortgages, but the bleakness of the final scene tells its own story.