Meet the ‘Lehman Trilogy’ cast, three actors juggling dozens of roles
‘The Lehman Trilogy” is a play centered on transformation. First, there’s the sprawling saga, spanning 164 years and multiple generations, as a Jewish immigrant family evolves their business from a small dry goods purveyor in Montgomery, Ala., to brokers selling cotton to factories in the North, and from an investment bank that helped build America’s railroad, oil, and steel industries into the fabled Wall Street firm whose collapse spurred the 2008 financial crisis. As decades unfurl and history marches on, three shape-shifting actors transform into dozens of characters over the course of three hours in this parable of the awesome ascent and staggering demise of Lehman Brothers.
“I think audiences are delighted by the showmanship of three actors telling this epic story, and that puts a smile on the face,” says Steven Skybell, who portrays eldest brother Henry Lehman, his savvy nephew Philip Lehman, and dozens of other characters in the Huntington production that runs through July 23.
The show marks the first American-originated production of the play, with an American cast and creative team. The 2021 Britain-to-Broadway staging, directed by Sam Mendes with a starry British cast, garnered widespread critical acclaim and captured the Tony Award for best play.
Tucked into bright red seats at the Huntington Theatre, Skybell and his costars, Joshua David Robinson and Firdous Bamji, evince an easygoing bonhomie during the spirited conversation. They say that one of the thrills of the play, written by Italian author Stefano Massini and adapted by British playwright Ben Power, is transforming into all those characters — from the founding Lehman brothers Henry, Emanuel, and Mayer to generations of wives and children — in the blink of an eye.
“The play is catnip for an actor,” says Bamji, who plays youngest brother Mayer and urbane art aficionado Bobby Lehman, who helped the firm recover during the Great Depression, among other roles. “It’s like you’re part of a trapeze artist act, and if someone doesn’t throw [the bar] at the right time, then you can’t grab it. As a cast, you really feel like one organism.”
As the descendant of Jewish immigrants who arrived in Texas and Oklahoma, Skybell says he can empathize with “the idea of leaving your home behind and coming to a land of opportunity and finding any way to make a success for yourself and for your family. My grandfather came to this country [from Poland] and brought his brothers over one at a time, just like in the play.”
Skybell earned rave reviews for playing Tevye in the acclaimed Yiddish language production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” directed by Joel Grey. Playing Henry, the first of the Lehman brothers to emigrate to America, Skybell says he “holds onto [him] dearly because his instincts and desires were pure. He just wanted to make a living. But what happens is that one success leads to another.”
Emanuel Lehman, the fiery, action-oriented middle brother, lived the longest of the siblings. He brought the business to New York, and he and Mayer steered it into commodities trading and investment banking. Robinson says that Emanuel’s great skill was “lighting the fire” to get things started. “With Emanuel, the cost of taking the first step towards something is very low,” Robinson says. “He’s like, ‘All right, this is an idea that we could do. How is it all going to work out? I don’t know. We’re going to figure it out.’”
“Emanuel had this drive to keep growing and expanding the business,” Robinson says. “And I think at some point, like with all of these men, it became a bit of an undoing. Because it was never enough, and it was never going to be enough. I’m fascinated by that idea being core to a person’s being.”
Robinson’s favorite character to play is Mayer’s son Herbert, who becomes a four-term governor of New York and later a US senator (and ally of Franklin D. Roosevelt). “The version of Herbert in our play, he got into politics because he wanted to help people,” Robinson says. “He has a problem with a lot of the way the free market capitalist system has worked. Because it worked for some people but it didn’t work for everybody. And he was interested in how society could work better for as many people as possible.”
Mayer is the diplomatic youngest brother who often plays peacemaker between his two combative siblings. “For Mayer, it’s all about family and holding the family together, keeping his brothers close to him,” says Bamji, who was previously seen at the Huntington in “Mary Stuart” in 2000. “And he comes up with great ideas! When they’re at a crossroads about how to expand, it’s Mayer who comes up with the figures and the notions of how to reinvent the business.”
Bobby Lehman, an avid art collector, was the last of the family actively involved in the partnership when he died in 1969. Bamji says that the CEO position “gets foisted upon him at the worst time, and he has to keep the ship afloat” during the Great Depression. He feels the familial pressure to step in when his father tasks him with saving the company. But after he engineers its recovery in the ensuing decades, he too loses his way.
The actors bring to life a bevy of other characters, from various wives and children to quicksketch cameos of Montgomery locals and New York business titans, even modern-era CEOs like Pete Peterson, Lewis Glucksman, and Dick Fuld. The actors credit director Carey Perloff, voice coach Lee Nishri-Howitt, and movement consultant Misha Shields with helping them create a unique dialect, sound, and physicality for each character. This is often where the laughs in the production are mined.
“It only dawned on me later that there was any humor in this play,” Skybell says. “One needs broad strokes in this story. Sometimes as an actor, you shy away from [that]. But I think the audience is energized by the flips. People say the play flies by.”
In portraying some of the characters that pass quickly through the play, Bamji says it’s about locating the fine line of “making them pop without objectifying them. I tried for a long time not to do a caricature. But there’s no way, if you only have one word to speak, not to have some strong choice, or no one’s going to get it.”
In a scene taking place in the aftermath of the Civil War, a doctor comments on the inevitable collapse of the South’s economy. “Everything . . . here was built on a crime,” the physician says. “The ground beneath our feet is poisoned.” Still, the play has been criticized for not truly grappling with slavery and the cotton trade (and skirting the fact that some Lehmans owned slaves). So Perloff wanted to dig deeper, with a physical production that evoked America’s original sin and the cotton that the Lehmans made their first fortune from.
After auditioning for the play, Robinson recalls telling Perloff, “I have some questions about this play, girl.”
“Because I don’t think it really reckons with slavery or antisemitism,” he says. “They owned slaves, which is not in the play. I’m disappointed by that, and to obscure those facts I think is a problem. But I was hopeful that we could make a production where the audience couldn’t escape the fact that this generational wealth was based on the exploitation of Black people.”
Ultimately, Robinson argues, “The Lehman Trilogy” explores “what gets passed down from generation to generation and how dreams are intergenerational, in a real, tangible way. We aren’t just living individual lives. We’re all connected to each other at this moment in history and society, but we’re also connected because we’re still dealing with decisions that were made three or four generations ago.”