REVIEW: Canadian theatre has a thing for The Lehman Trilogy. Does it work at Theatre Calgary?
iPhoto caption: The Lehman Trilogy production still by Trudie Lee.
So, you know about the 2008 financial crisis. (Or more likely, lived through it.) But how much do you know about the family that was nestled in the eye of its storm?
Theatre Calgary’s The Lehman Trilogy confronts the story of capitalism’s notorious Lehman brothers with staggering momentum. Running just shy of three-and-a-half hours, the production is an ultra-marathon that is certainly not for the weak of heart, nor for the weak of bladder. (But don’t worry — there are multiple intermissions!)
A veritable Forrest Gump of theatre, Stefano Massini’s play (adapted by Ben Power) reveals that the Lehman brothers have had their fingers in just about every finance-related pie of the last century-and-a-half. From the family’s immigration to North America in 1844 all the way to their infamous ruination in 2008, The Lehman Trilogy paints a detailed picture of a family sold on the American dream and in turn, ultimately condemned by its mythic promises.
The real drivers of Theatre Calgary’s production are its three performers. And boy, do they ever drive. Each performance pulses with unmatched and unrelenting vivacity, made all the more impressive by the stamina required from the ambitious runtime. Looking past some opening-night stumbles and fumbles, the sky-high energy maintained by each actor respectively is an illustration of stage acting at its finest. Taking on a slew of characters with multitudes of accents, the performers’ masks never slip, and Diane Flacks’ knack for comedic timing, Alex Poch-Goldin’s steady gravitas, and Michael Rubenfeld’s malleability make for a delightful ensemble indeed. Flacks’ embodying of many male personas, in particular, is a compelling touch of subversion, making us consider how the play, and subsequently the male-dominated world of finance, repeatedly curtails women.
A credit to the strength of the ensemble, Sarah Garton Stanley’s direction is fierce. That is, you can palpably feel the voice of the director in the room as a result of the sheer velocity in the actor’s performances. It’s dizzying, it’s demanding, and for the most part, it’s necessary. You don’t make a 176-page script fly without keeping your hand firmly on the throttle, and you better believe Stanley’s grip is relentless — at times, to a fault. The pacing might have benefited from some dips and curves every now and again, since the charged frequency of the actors’ performances often makes it difficult to catch a breath and truly digest the jam-packed plot.
The gargantuan retelling of the Lehmans’ history, albeit riddled with artistic liberties, is pretty captivating. What struck me most about Massini’s script is that it is filled with what I can only describe as modest mic-drop lines. Thanks to its simple yet potent hand, the text’s subtle poetry and almost folkloric repetition hits in all the right places without feeling overwritten. The script is Tony Award-winning and it shows.
While the play is certainly text-centric, it would be remiss to ignore The Lehman Trilogy’s design work. Amy Keith’s set, full of trap doors and elevators, embodies the sort of optical illusion that mirrors that of the Lehman brothers’ public image; larger than life, yet distinctly off-putting. The main platform of the set is slanted down towards the audience and serves as a constant reminder of the shaky footing that the brothers, and all of us living in late-stage capitalism, are forever constricted to. Off-kilter and warped, the characters are always one misstep away from falling.
Beyond the material set, the production’s design also includes constant use of projections to inform us of scene titles, locations, and dates, as well as to punctuate onstage action. The array of designer HAUI’s projections, though somewhat on the nose in their depictions of in-text imagery, make for a stunning high-tech backdrop for the historical storyline.
Despite my high regard for the play’s many feats of artistry, I am left wondering: Why? An undeniably American play in both its content and messaging, Theatre Calgary’s production at times struggles to answer the question of applicability and relevance to contemporary Canadian theatre-goers. That being said, the play has been making its rounds. With a production in Toronto in 2023 and others in Winnipeg and Victoria earlier this year, The Lehman Trilogy is certainly proving of interest to Canadian theatres as an avenue for tackling audiences’ ever-constant questions and anxieties surrounding economic conditions.
And though one could absolutely make an argument for The Lehman Trilogy’s mirroring of Canada’s growing affordability crisis or draw parallels between the Lehman dynasty and those of Canada’s many oligopolies, any explicit comparative bridges in this production are either absent or too faint to spot. Theatre Calgary misses the opportunity to really carve out these thematic access points amidst its roaring speed and, in the end, falls just short in its impact.
Is The Lehman Trilogy a theatrical triumph? Yes! But what is an artistic triumph on the periphery of social and political pertinence? I’m not too sure.
The Lehman Trilogy runs at Theatre Calgary until November 3. Tickets are available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Eve Beauchamp
Eve Beauchamp (they/them) is an award-winning Calgary-based theatre artist, playwright, and graduate of the BFA in Acting at the University of Ottawa. They are the co-artistic director of Levity Theatre Company and primarily create work that explores queerness, capitalism, and neurodivergence through humour, poetry, and storytelling. Currently, you can find them pursuing their Master of Fine Arts in Drama at the University of Calgary.
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I enjoyed and agree with this review on most points. It deftly captures the experience of seeing this stellar production.
It’s closing note does need to be engaged with, however.
Calgary is a city defined by the economics of industry, and has also weathered the transitions of industry, from fluctuating oil prices to the immanent issue of climate change.
This means that many Calgarians are very market-aware, and the repercussions of the crisis hinted at in 2008 would have been well known and easily remembered.
The play is a breakneck story of the family as they leap into often new and risky financial territory, and each time it pays off, we have a measure of relief, because Calgarians understand what it’s like on either side of that risk.
Calgarians watching this play, knowing the gamble being over-invested in one thing, (particularly those in the energy industry) didn’t need an explicit program statement or emphasized narrative beat to connect the social and political pertinence. It was, to them, so obvious, so already in the air, that it didn’t need to be said. (In fact, anything more overt might run the risk of falling into what would feel like a cliched moralizing.)