The epic length evolution of three brothers from Bavaria becoming Americans, immigrants in the 19th century coming by boat, would be one kind of story, maybe a sequel to “Fiddler,” picking up when the family leaves the shtetl. That this is the Lehman family, who go from textile merchants in the south to the Lehman Brothers—yes, those Lehman Brothers— bankers at the heart of the giant financial debacle of 2008,--spins this saga: the dream that arcs and declines to dust. This awesome dramatic work, The Lehman Trilogy by Italian playwright and novelist Stefano Massini, a pre-pandemic hit at the Park Avenue Armory, is now neatly performed in a rotating crystal cube—"a magical music box”-- at the Nederlander Theater, lauded and playing to packed houses every night—to masked, vaxxed, avid theatergoers. It’s still a hot show.
The trilogy may rival Angels in America as a large and unique variation of the dream. Under Sam Mendes’s fine direction, the British actors are the main event. Simon Russell Beale, the eldest brother, Haim becomes Henry upon reaching these shores. An alpha male, the actor dissolves effortlessly into the girl he will marry, illustrating just how split-second, unexpected and witty the actors’ performances are, and how the principal cast of three occupy a world. As the middle brother Mendel now Emmanuel, Adrian Lester, so evocative when he starred in Red Velvet is a distinguished presence and Adam Godley, —the tall third brother Mayer nicknamed Spud—his angles, physicality, amaze. Each—likable in this context-- becomes a wife, a son in this portrait of capitalist success, despite their casual disregard of slavery, the poor, how they and their children step on their way up. Well, that’s American too, through a European lens.