The Lehman Trilogy
Stefano Massini
Adapted by Ben Power
San Jose Stage Company
It is a story whose ending we already too well know. The world’s fourth largest investment bank with $639 billion in assets and 25,000 employees files for the biggest bankruptcy in American history, sending Wall Street into panic and initiating the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the collapse of numerous, other banking institutions. Ben Power’s three-hour, three-act The Lehman Trilogy – a 2022, five Tonys-Awards-winning adaptation of Stefano Massini’s original, five-hour, French version – opens in a scene among dozens of stacked and scattered, file-sized boxes in a now otherwise, mostly empty, New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers. The time is September 15, 2008, the day of Lehman’s Chapter 11 filing announcement.
Truly epic in scope and length, The Lehman Trilogy immediately rewinds the clock 158 years to the moment the first Lehman brother lands off the boat in New York. What follows on the intimate, floor-level setting of San Jose Stage Company’s stage is a live, cinematic-like history lesson that is immediately captivating, incredibly fascinating, and emotionally a roller-coaster as the successful pursuit of the American Dream by three immigrant brothers eventually becomes a frightening nightmare affecting the entire world.
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
Rating: 5 E
A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production
Cavalleria Rustica and Pagliacci continue through March 1 2026 in a two-hour, forty-five-minute production (with intermission) by Opera San Jose at the California Theatre, 345 1st Street, San Jose, CA. Tickets are available online at www.operasj.org or by phone at 408-437-4450, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Monday – Friday.
Photo Credits: David Allen
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