The Lehman Trilogy review: The financial drama is an austere acting tour de force

Coming to Los Angeles direct from Broadway (and with two-thirds of its original cast), The Lehman Trilogy at Center Theatre Group's Ahmanson Theatre is a play as complex and thorny as its central figures.

Written by Italian playwright Stefano Massini and adapted into English by Ben Power, the play follows the three Lehman brothers, Henry (Simon Russell Beale), Mayer (Adam Godley), and Emanuel (Howard W. Overshown), who emigrate to America from Germany in the 1840s. The brothers begin their careers as fabric merchants in Alabama, eventually graduating to cotton "middlemen," before transforming into the bank that laid the groundwork for the infamous financial institution audiences know today.

The play is a trilogy in multiple senses of the word, not just a story in three acts, but a three-hander between the actors as they enact a fluid dance, at one moment the three core Lehmans and their descendants, the next their wives, toddlers, clients, and more. It's their performances that are the heart of the show, taking the audience on a dizzying dance through over 150 years of the family business' history.

Beale and Godley, who have been with the show since its original English-language run at the National Theater in London, are particularly revelatory — their flawless transitions between characters a theatrical slight of hand. Overshown has a domineering quality that shines through in each role, which is often effective, but other times overrides the character in question.

They cavort in Es Devlin's remarkable set (which is further transformed by Luke Halls' video design and Jon Clark's lighting). The action takes place in a glass box, upon which the actors use dry erase pens to scrawl the ever-changing iterations of the Lehman Bros. sign. Devlin's set is a modern corporate office, all minimalism and polished, sharp edges, but with the assistance of Halls' video, it transforms into an Alabama mercantile shop, the New York Stock Exchange, a race track, and more. The video backdrops are equally stark, the action taking place squarely on a black-and-white playing field with the characters clothed in unchanging black-and-white suits. The only color comes in hallucinatory dream sequences, where a blood-red dread soaks the stage.

It's all very symbolic, an extension of the play's quirky writing style, a narrative approach that finds the actors both playing characters and narrating those characters' actions in the third person. Imagine if Ken Burns directed Succession — the result would be something like this theatrical docudrama.

The Lehman Trilogy is long (nearly 3.5 hours including intermission), invested in sharing the hairy particulars of the company's long history from its founding to its 2008 implosion amidst the United States' financial crisis. There's a grief there, a repetition of the brothers sitting Shiva and saying the Kaddish for what has been lost — first, each other, and ultimately, their legacy. But there's also a clinical sheen to it all, the sense that everything is happening at arms' length, only underpinned by the distancing narrative approach. It's intentional, without question. And everything in the production — from its design to its performances — is air-tight in execution.

But whether or not it works is probably an entirely personal experience. The takeaway is unclear — are we supposed to empathize? Judge? Be shocked? All of the above? It's an immigrant story, and a muddy one at that. One that examines the ways in which hustle and hard work can insidiously morph into greed and rot so slowly one barely notices. But if it's difficult to care about the Lehman Brothers legacy of avarice going in, and even coming out with a greater sense of the scope of their history, the play does little to change that. Grade: B

Related content:

• Slave Play at the Mark Taper review: A provocative, probing experience
• The Lehman Trilogy review: Financial drama becomes a post-modern thrill on Broadway
• All the shows you have to see on Broadway this spring