• The Lehman Trilogy, West End

From Anatevka to Alabama: by sheer coincidence, my matinee show Fiddler on the Roof ended with European Jews emigrating for America, while the evening show featured European Jewish immigrants arriving in America. The Lehman Trilogy, written by Hebrew-speaking Italian playwright Stefano Massini (adapted and translated by Ben Power), is a phenomenal history of the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers over a 150-year period, taking on the history of capitalism in the West and gradual erosion of the titular family’s life as Jews since its immigration from Germany in the 19th century – a continuation of Fiddler in its way. The fictional musical explored the gradual breakdown of tradition in the lives of individual families. This epic drama looks at where that leads.

The three brothers move from Ellis Island to Montgomery, Alabama, where they set up a modest general store prior to the Civil War. They begin to accept payment from cash-starved plantations in cotton, which they sell to manufacturers in a process that virtually establishes the concept of a middleman. They move gradually into other products such as oil and coffee that they buy and sell without ever actually touching, then begin financing railways, motion pictures and other growing enterprises in booming America. They use disasters such as the Civil War and Black Thursday as opportunities, and their business – and ambitions – expand exponentially. The children and grandchildren of the original three move increasingly away from the Jewish and European culture that had sustained them – symbolized by ever-shorter mourning periods (shiva) as each generation gives way to the next – and into less personal activity, where business is simply money making money. The ties to the firm’s origins sever completely when the last Lehman dies and someone from outside the family takes over.

The story’s arc is chilling and profoundly moving, not least because we know where all this is heading. The play ends just before the collapse of the mega-firm and the resulting devastation wreaked on the global economy. The show is less an indictment of the capitalistic system itself than a portrait of the breakdown of tradition and a common heritage into a fetishism over the individual, the only unit left when a society has nothing else to share.

The entire cast of dozens of characters was played by three remarkable actors at the peak of their powers: Simon Russell Beale (further cementing his status as the best British actor of his generation), Ben Miles and Adam Godley. In a highly fluid production, all took multiple roles – from children to rabbis to wives to Southern farmers to various generations of Lehmans, even fantasy turns like a tightrope walker – all with slight changes of costume and voice, while also narrating the parts in between. Sam Mendes has done a miraculous job in crafting this sprawling story into a consistent and consistently engaging narrative. Es Devlin’s set featured a rotating glass cube that took us smoothly from scene to scene against a backdrop of atmospheric videos designed by Luke Halls. Packaging boxes stand in for many props, a clever foreshadowing of the boxes that employees were shown carrying out when the firm disintegrated. This was theater at its very best. Brilliant, subtle, enlightening and essential.

A good friend who worked at Lehman refused to see or even talk about the show, explaining the personal vendettas and systemic failures that led to an entirely avoidable tragedy. That’s an extremely interesting idea for a show, but it’s not the point of this one. I’m sorry he’ll miss it.