(Ben Brantley’s article appeared in The New York Time, 3/28; via Pam Green.)
In the beginning, there is nothing. And in the end, there is — nothing, once again.
Such is the way of all flesh, no? And, since the subject here is the accumulation of money, let’s say the way of all cash, too. But in this case, out of nothing there emerges such a heaving ferment of aspiration, energy, tenacity and audacity that you’re left reeling by the scope and vitality of it all.
That, in essence, is what the magnificent play “The Lehman Trilogy,” at the Park Avenue Armory, both is about and, more important, simply is. This genuinely epic production out of London, directed with surging sweep and fine-tooled precision by Sam Mendes, charts the history of the financial institution that would come to be known as Lehman Brothers, from its humble origins to its epical implosion, over a span of three centuries and many generations.
The script by the Italian playwright Stefano Massini, exquisitely adapted into English by Ben Power, follows the blossoming of a small Alabama clothing store in the 1840s, founded by three immigrant Jewish brothers from Bavaria, into an international powerhouse of the stock exchange, before its world-rattling collapse in 2008.
