At 3+ hours, the Denver Center production takes some endurance while showcasing some fine performances

Three actors, 170 years, three acts, dozens of characters — the Denver Center Theatre Company production of The Lehman Trilogy is a big show.

But it’s also a small one, with a minimalist set, a tiny cast and a script that leans heavily into movement rather than expansive exposition. While it lands in Denver with a lot of buzz, the well-directed and well-acted play nonetheless has a few factors that might make it a questionable choice for all but die-hard theatregoers. The runtime of three hours and 20 minutes can be daunting, while the spare production and lack of visual modulation through the fast-paced series of scenes can feel repetitive.

Stefano Massini’s Tony Award-winning play concerns the rise and fall of the storied Lehman Brothers bank, which dramatically collapsed in 2008 and helped supercharge the financial crisis. Most of the story focuses more on that rise. From the moment Henry Lehman, a Jew from Bavaria, lands in New York in 1844 to the fiery end, the story is a quintessentially American tale of ambition, hard work and greed. And it’s also a fascinating history of how a little garment shop in Alabama with a sticky doorknob morphed into a global financial powerhouse.

Matthew Boston as Henry Lehman | Photo: Jamie Kraus Photography

The setup

The in-the-round configuration of the DCPA’s Kilstrom Theatre is the ideal setting for the action, which director Margot Bordelon guides with a high degree of precision. There’s a lot of hard left turns from one bit of dialogue to another, and the three actors are in constant motion. It’s not often we see such a high-speed production that’s not a comedy, and Bordelon found three actors well up to the task.

As the eldest Lehman, Henry, Matthew Boston appears with a shabby suitcase, a full beard and wearing the kind of dark suit you might picture on the likes of Edgar Allen Poe. Boston does nice work establishing the character as the eager immigrant who landed on these shores ready for anything. That starts with having his name changed by a customs official from Heyum Lehmann to Henry Lehman.

He’s followed a couple of years later by his flashier younger brother, Emanuel (Sasha Roiz) and later by the youngest of the trio Mayer (Tasso Feldman). Roiz plays Emanuel as a flash cove with perfectly groomed facial hair and a grudging acceptance that Henry calls the shots. Feldman gets a lot of the laugh lines as the youngest, so baby-faced that Emanuel compares him to a potato (a joke that’s milked for the rest of the show).

These are three busy actors, who not only have to do most of the set changes themselves but who also have stage directions mixed in with their lines. It’s a curious technique and one I found amusingly effective. Even when it was clear what was going on, one of the brothers might say something like, “He smiled, and left the room” as the other smiles and leaves the room.

Visually, it’s a dark production with a minimal set | Photo: Jamie Kraus Photography

Missed opportunities

Bordelon makes good use of the Kilstrom’s turntable, particularly in scenes where the characters are going somewhere. As she demonstrated in her direction of the DCPA Theatre Company’s 2022 production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? in 2022, Bordelon has a keen ear for sharp, fast-paced dialogue and how to pair it with matching movement. Here, it’s as if she’s acknowledging the fatigue that might overcome the audience over more than three hours with Daytona 500-level blocking.

And it works, mostly. But despite all that physical action, many other elements change little. What’s challenging for the audience is that the many scenes of The Lehman Trilogy look nearly identical. That decision to go minimalist might have its advantages by not cluttering things up, but it also makes the omnipresent grays and blacks grow monotonous. Another choice is to leave the characters in the same clothes they showed up with from Bavaria in, even as decades pass. With two intermissions, why not mix up the wardrobe to add interest?

As the trio morphs from the original brothers to later family members running the company, some costume tweaks would have helped us remember who’s who. Even so, the power of the story seems to wane as the years go on, with the last really interesting Lehman being Emanuel’s son Phillip.

With the Lehman Brothers story and its spectacular demise is so well known, it’s tough for the playwright to tweak that ending much. It also turns out that the Lehman Family itself isn’t represented any longer by 2008, so the stakes for the audience are even lower.

Massini’s choice was to wrap up this part of the history somewhat perfunctorily while focusing more on the earlier history. And it is an interesting one as we watch the humble beginnings of a garment and fabric shop change into a cotton-trading powerhouse. As necessity drives the brothers to get involved in finance, we see up-close the inner workings of market capitalism and how it came to be.

Through the Civil War, a devastating fire, market ups and downs, family infighting and the downfall, the play covers a lot of ground and creates an excellent showcase for the cast of chameleons depicting these characters. It succeeds as a study in capitalism, depicting the rise of a class of businesspeople who profit as middlemen off the labors of others.

And while the script may have benefitted by a bit of streamlining, the linking of the family members over the decades does take time to flesh out. Overall the Denver Center production is solid and worth all that seat time. Just know what you’re getting into, and maybe read up a bit on the Lehmans beforehand to keep up.