Review: Guthrie Theater’s three-act ‘Lehman Trilogy’ is an absorbing triumph

Actors Edward Gero, Mark Nelson and Will Sturdivant are like virtuoso musicians who play all the instruments in an orchestra. In “The Lehman Trilogy,” this versatile trio delivers an epic introspective symphony.

It was none other than the great political philosopher Mitt Romney who said, “corporations are people, my friend.” Instead of snickering at the apparent absurdity, Italian playwright Stefano Massini takes Romney at his word and finds a family to embody the dreams, arrogance and contradictions of a system that daily demands to be fed. His verse play, which opened Thursday at Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater, has been artfully adapted by Ben Power.

The Lehmans start arriving from Bavaria in 1844 and set up shop in Birmingham, Ala., trading in cotton, the white gold of the time. Over the next 164 years, the family would rise to become titans of American finance with their namesake company ranking as the fourth largest investment bank.

At the expert direction of Arin Arbus and on Marsha Ginsberg’s pentagonal set, Gero, Nelson and Sturdivant perform in a sea of shredded paper. It’s a milieu of deconstruction but also a sandbox as each actor fleetingly and skillfully inhabits numerous characters. They are protean in the three-act, two-intermission drama that charts the fortunes and misfortunes of the Lehmans.

The play starts in the 2008 financial crisis wreckage as job losses intensify, people lose their homes and things generally go to pot. As the news broadcast about the possible bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers fades, the action flashes back to 1844. Gero’s Henry, the oldest and first of the Lehmans, makes his entry into America in a comical scene that’s a blip even as it establishes the theatrical language and craft that we will see throughout the play.

As immigration authorities struggle with how to pronounce the Bavarian arrival’s name, they change Heyum to something more American-sounding — Henry. Gero plays all the parts in this bit that really announces his quicksilver mastery of gesture, diction and text.

Henry is considered the head in the family. Younger brother Emanuel (Sturdivant), regarded as the arm, arrives after and is in frequent disagreement with his brother as they expand the business Henry first set up. It takes peacemaking sibling Mayer Spud (Nelson), so called because he’s as smooth as a potato, to complete the trio.

This first act teems with simple but effective theatrical invention. It also establishes the template of much of what is to follow as the actors tell us about their roles before going into character. Funny as Mayer’s bride Babette Newgass, Gero carries much of the load in this opening frame.

But the three trade off lines and laughs with blithe ease. And Sturdivant and Nelson make Emanuel’s and Mayer’s entrances thrillingly surprising.

Composer Michael Costagliola’s score adds a cinematic element to the proceedings, complimented by Yi Zhao’s lighting scheme. As the Lehmans become co-founders of the New York Cotton Exchange and investment bankers who provide capital for continental infrastructure projects like railroads and the Panama Canal, something interesting starts to accelerate in the culture and in the family’s life.

It’s not only the separation of the means of production from the resultant products that intensifies. The meaning of money itself becomes more abstract and we’re watching shadows in Plato’s vaunted cave. As Emanuel exults, speaking of the exchanges, “There’s no iron but the word ‘iron,’ no fabric but the word ‘fabric,’ no coal but the word ‘coal’ — a temple of words.”

That distancing from roots and values also shows up in the family. Mayer beholds his princely New York-born nephew, Philip, exclaiming: “He was born from an arm but yet he doesn’t lift a finger.”

The actors have fun with their lines, imparting the language with precision and relish. When Henry goes to Baltimore to see a beaming potential client, he describes him as “a smile surrounded by a person.”

Gero, Nelson and Sturdivant function like an old-fashioned comedy trio. Nelson is a stitch as the various would-be brides when they do the bit about Philip’s search for a wife.

A tightrope walker who is flawless for 50 years is one of the show’s leitmotifs. But his one mistake comes just as Wall Street crashes and a ceiling of light dramatically falls to compress the action.

Emanuel’s chronicle of the stock market’s fall, and the fatal effects on stockbrokers, is gripping: “What money,” he asks loudly, then in rapid-fire, interlaced with gunshots, he says. “There is no money. Money is a ghost. Money is numbers. Money is air. You can’t now, all of you, all together want money!”

Bullets resound in the closing frame of “Lehman” which uses the Great Depression as a stand-in for the Great Recession of 2008.

The play serves the story at all costs, including sometimes eliding history and facts. It offers up, like the shredded paper, the wreckage of a system that ultimately chews up people even as it gives them opportunities to exercise their wildest dreams.

In the play’s final scene, Henry’s thoughts describe what we’re seeing as if it’s a black-and-white photograph. It’s an open-ended image that curls back to the beginning, suggesting an endless, open loop that Gero delivers flawlessly: “In the days before a head, an arm and a potato made a journey and opened a shop and founded a company — before the markets and the chaos, the fire and the flood when there was nothing but three brothers standing together in the morning sun dreaming of America.”

Who: Adapted by Ben Power from Stefano Massini’s play. Directed by Arin Arbus.

Where: Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Mpls.

When: 7 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 12:30 & 7 p.m. Sat., 7 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 13.

Tickets: $29 to $83. 612-377-2224, guthrietheater.org.