PURE Theatre hosts the regional premiere of hit drama The Lehman Trilogy, winner of the 2022 Tony Award for Best New Play. This show, which runs now through Feb. 10 at the Cannon Street Arts Center, features three of PURE’s longest-standing core ensemble members, who all agree this show is one of the most exciting and challenging works the company has ever tackled.
The story begins in New York in 1844 when a young Henry Lehman immigrates from the German state Bavaria to pursue his American Dream. His two brothers join him stateside and establish the Lehman Brothers company in 1850 as a fabric store in Alabama, where the brothers later establish the concept of brokerage. From there, the company grows way beyond its humble beginnings to the business audiences will likely recognize by name as a major player in the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.
The show condenses more than 150 years of dramatized history, acting as a sort of prequel to the events of 2008 when the Lehman Brothers firm (at the time, the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States behind Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch) filed for bankruptcy.
R.W. Smith, who portrays the middle brother Emanuel Lehman, told the City Paper that The Lehman Trilogy explores “the double edged sword of the American Dream.”
“These three brothers come over here to just start a business and start a new life. You watch how the company progresses, as their children take it over, and it grows through the decades — they start sloughing off their family values, and as the next generations make choices that look good, because they make a lot of money, they’re moving farther and farther from their core values.”
An American epic
The events of 2008 frame the show — it starts and ends in this time period — with the story in between proving itself an American epic, one that has received great praise for its lyrical writing and inventive script. Sharon Graci, PURE’s co-founder and director of the production, said it’s one of the most-produced plays in the country this year, “and there’s a reason for that,” she added.
“It’s so poignant. Wrapped up inside this show are themes of bravery, ingenuity, never quitting, success and failure, and it’s so poetically written.”
Graci and the cast started work on this beast of a show back in July due to its great scope. Each actor, Smith, Michael Smallwood and David Mandel, play a Lehman Brother and portray the other 25-plus supporting characters who fill out the show’s world. Mandel, who plays the eldest brother, Henry, said weaving together nearly two centuries of family history into a three-and-a-half hour play is a sort of “magic show.”
For Smallwood, who plays the youngest Lehman brother, Meyer, the great scope of the show contains both the most challenging and most rewarding pieces of his creative process.
“Playing multiple characters, it’s a lot to put in your body,” Smallwood told the City Paper. “[It’s a challenge] trying to make sure that each character we play is vocally and physically distinct. The audience has to know Meyer Lehman when he comes back. He’s a German-Jewish immigrant who then moved to Alabama. So in playing him, I have to ask, is he someone whose German accent stayed with him? Does Southern twang make its way into his speech? … When he’s there, he has to be him, distinctly. That stuff is challenging in a way that you don’t want the audience to think about.”
Working together
The long-standing relationships between the core ensemble actors helped them dive deeply into those questions, Smallwood said.
“This is a huge undertaking, a really big piece of theater. I mean, it is mammoth. When you’re tackling a beast, you need a team you can trust,” he said. He’s worked for nearly a decade with actors Smith and Mandel — both of whom have acted together in PURE’s core ensemble since 2004.
“This is one of the benefits of ensemble work and working at PURE — I love getting to perform with these people,” Smallwood said. “These are the people I trust the most on stage.”
And that trust, said Smith, creates a sense of artistic freedom.
“We’ve got each other’s back. If there’s an issue, they’re going to pick you up and vice versa,” Smith said. “So that gives you the freedom artistically to be able to take chances and push yourself — that’s where the excitement happens. … Now something new can happen within your character because you’ve got these people you can trust.”
Graci said this is the reason why PURE committed to being an ensemble company back in 2004. “Because we really are a family — there’s definitely a shorthand, a family dynamic.”
So PURE is a perfect setting for a story which is, on the surface, about American financial history, but at its core, is a story about family, brothers and the double-edged sword of the American Dream.
Tickets for The Lehman Trilogy range from $47 to $53, or $10 for students. There will be an ASL-interpreted performance at 3 p.m. Feb. 4. There will be two pay-what-you-will performances on Jan. 11 and Jan. 17. Information is available at puretheatre.org or by calling the box office at (843) 723-4444 between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday.
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