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WHAT IS THE LEHMAN TRILOGY?
The Lehman Trilogy is an 2015 Italian play by Stefano Massini about the defunct Lehman Brothers company and the first three generations of the Lehman family residing in America. Originally formatted in the style of an epic poem, it was subsequently adapted into an Italian satirical novel, Something About Lehman, the next year. This novel was also written by Massini. The titles used in the novel ( Three Brothers, Fathers & Sons and The Immortal Man ) would later go on to be used in the English translation to introduce each of the three acts when it was performed and filmed in 2018 at the National Theatre, with Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles.
The 2018 National Theatre production is the one I'm going to analyse.
Actually, man was removed and became The Immortal in the 2018 NT production.
Now, on with the show!
i. THE EMPEROR - EMANUEL LEHMAN
I find Emanuel to be the most difficult of the three to write about due to the fact the audience isn't given very much to work with, which I think is deliberate.
Emanuel's trauma is implied to stem from his upbringing but I believe a major cause of this pain is losing his older brother Henry. Because of this, I don't think Emanuel was ever fully able to take his place as the Arm doesn't do the talking, the Head does. Decades pass after his death and Emanuel is still using his role as the Arm even though him and Mayer are co-running the entire thing. This is noticeable when he's talking to Archibald Davidson of United Railway early in Act 2 and appears to be struggling, which is when his son, Philip, steps in and gets them a brilliant deal. More on Philip's treatment soon.
Just like what will happen with his son and grandson, New York corrupts Emanuel. It poisons and contorts him as if he's being tortured on the wheel. His morals, like a person's bones, crack and are irreversibly destroyed.
There's only three occasions throughout the entire play where Emanuel is vulnerable. The first is when he goes to ask his future wife again and again whether she'll marry him, the second is during the middle of Act I where he essentially begs Mayer to move from Montgomery to New York and the last being his dream sequence where he dreams about being nearly hit by a train. He only escapes it because the train suddenly disappears. The train represents his greatest fear: his fear of erasure from history and to a lesser extent, Henry's original vision being destroyed.
The effect of Henry's death on Emanuel subconsciously extends to how he treats his son. The way he treats Philip stems from a deep, hidden part of Emanuel who despises the fact he can never replace his brother in terms of achievement so pushes all of this ceaseless pressure onto a child. In the 1870s, men had no way to speak about their emotions, especially self hatred, without being seen as weak. So all of it goes on Philip. If Emanuel can't achieve anything notable without the shadow of Henry then Philip is his winning card, his one chance. To conclude, he figuratively sacrifices his son because he has an incessant need to leave a mark on the world and he's too old to do so.
Based on his treatment of Philip paired with his dream, it's glaringly obvious Henry haunts Emanuel even if we don't see him do so.
Do put a pin in the winning card motif, it comes back to bite us all later.
In sharp contrast, Emanuel makes an effort to prevent the same fate befalling his grandson, Bobbie, who he takes to the latter's first ever horse race. I believe he is using Bobbie as an atonement for how he treated Philip because Emanuel is physically unable to apologise to him because that would make Emanuel weak nor does he want to admit he's wrong. Emanuel is taking back a bit of control in order to try and change the inevitable.
Another key aspect of Emanuel is his largely hidden violent, angry nature. Save for a few times we see him yell throughout the first two acts, we don't see any implication of violence minus the scene where Philip is reciting the cities off the map and we see Emanuel grimacing whilst his hands ball and unfurl as well as twitch once Philip makes a mistake. It's only a small detail but I think it's a major part of Emanuel that he reserves for a few. Due to the evidence, the audience can presume Philip is his primary target. Philip flinching in Act 2 when Emanuel yells at him to stop mentioning the trains.
He is also a chronic work alcoholic who doesn't cease work out of choice. Rather, he is pushed out of the company by his son when he's 70 years old and doesn't work for another twenty years or so. Due to his work alcoholic nature, he is broken by the wheel of power and greed he helped to build. New York has claimed its' first victim.
ii. THE CHARIOT - PHILIP LEHMAN
By far the most tragic of the three, Philip's entire life course was governed by ludicrously high expectations and a controlling father. This horrid treatment is highlighted in his first appearance as a seven year old when Pauline, his mother, snaps at him to "concentrate" after providing an incorrect answer to the question: "what is the heart of your father's business?" The yelling causes him to cry and blubber out the answer his mother wanted before then being told to run off and play. The fact he's not comforted is highly significant. The audience has just met this kid and he's already being used in some way. In this case, it's as both a party trick and a demonstration of his mother's achievement in life.
This emotional neglect is also illustrated by the simple fact he's never given any onstage affection by his father or his mother in the one scene they share together. This is further emphasised by the symbolistic choice in casting. Sam Mendes gets Simon Russell Beale, the oldest actor out of the three, to play Philip. This is emblematic of how Philip is forced to grow up extremely fast and mature way too quickly.
Calling back to a scene I mentioned previously, the United Railway fiasco, it's actually the first time the audience sees his father actually hear him when Philip speaks up about his thoughts on the trains. This indicates a lot of things. Largely, it adds to my evidence of neglect because it heavily implies Emanuel doesn't speak to Philip often and also because Philip says so much. Emanuel's shock at Philip's words holds credence to my theory too.
This scene is when his father finally sees Philip as a figure with some autonomy rather than an extension of himself. The other arm, if you will.
While he does hear Philip, he doesn't see him, at least not fully. That's why I said he's viewed as a figure with some autonomy.
Yes, the ideas are his own but that's all that Emanuel sees. The ideas. Not Philip. And that is the gutpunch of this specific scene.
To elaborate, Emanuel hears the result but doesn't see the cause. He doesn't see he's damaged his son irreparably. And Philip's actions in this scene unknowingly mark the beginning of the end for the first generation at Lehman Brothers.
During "the winning card is that one" sequence a bit later on in Act 2, Emanuel is seen yelling at Philip to keep his concentration as he plays tennis. Even when he's succeeding, his father is present. He can't escape him. It's extremely important to note that the sequence initially begins with Philip being very enthusiastic about the aforementioned "winning card" but as it goes on, his tone gets colder and he begins to brag about his ability. Winning is initially a nice thing for him as it's something he can enjoy that's separate from his father but this control begins suffocates him after a while. This suffocating control is a clear demonstration of Emanuel's influence due to Philip being raised to one day control the company so as he gets older, it becomes increasingly pressurising as he knows his father's death is encroaching by the year so this complete power is getting closer to his grasp. The bragging he does about technique and the like is another side effect of his father.
As Act 2 goes on, Philip gradually leans into moral corruption as his thirst for power rises and he turns the Lehman Brothers into a corporation as a by-product of said thirst, much to the horror of his son Bobbie and cousin Herbert. His turning point into a power hungry man is the scene where Philip is discussing his plan to build the Panama Canal in the middle of Act 2. To be more specific, his empty, slightly smug smile after getting the immediate approval he craved at the end of the scene. This is where he begins to devolve. But hey, he's still winning.
A key example of how he's, in some ways, become worse than his father is towards the end of Act 2 when he pushes Herbert out of the company for having a problem with his ideas. Herbert always has a problem with authority but this act is something Emanuel never would have done to his baby brother, Mayer, or his long dead elder brother, Henry, who haunts the narrative to varying degrees. This scene is used to highlight one thing: Philip exerts control when he wants to feel powerful and he most likely pushes Herbert out in order to further sever himself from his father. It's clear to us, the audience, by now that Emanuel haunts his son the way his brother haunts him.
This exertion of power extends to the first of three scenes where we see adult Philip vulnerable towards the end of Act 2. The first scene is when he's holding his baby son after winning unanimous approval in the previously mentioned Panama Canal proposal scene. He's so happy when he's holding his son not because he's a proud father but because he can continue to control and influence the future. He's won yet again.
The second scene we see him vulnerable is when he offers Bobbie a place on the company board and is rejected.
His unexpected loss of control is deeply distressing as he's not failed in years. This rejection and inability to further his control is the catalyst for Philip's dream. This sequence is the final scene in which the audience sees him vulnerable. It consists of his ambition, represented by sunlight, blinding him as his father makes him add more and more decorations to the roof of the Sukkah his father has built, representing the groundwork he laid for the company to become what Philip has grown up with. He's adding these decorations because he's terrified of rejection if he refuses. These decorations he's being commanded to use by his father represent the immense pressures Emanuel put on him throughout his life. It's emblematic that he has to make the roof because he's supposed to finish his father's plan to continue his legacy.
Despite his obedience to his father's desires, he hides under the hut ( substituted for a table in the staging ). Ironically, the company is what he used to shield himself from rejection despite it being the very reason he fears it so deeply. And the reason it collapses is because his brain is not equipped to cope with his son's rejection as well as his self-perceived failure. Both his father and uncle Mayer yell at him that "everything is about to fall!".
This evidence I've presented indicates the high likelihood that Philip has Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, a condition that causes a person to experience severe emotional pain because of failure or feeling rejected. His RSD is obviously the result of his emotional neglect by his parents and everyone around him as that extreme of a response is not indicative of a mentally well personality. The hoards of people who come into the dream represent societal pressures from the world that renders him unable to talk. This probability is strengthened by the fact Mayer and Emanuel are the figures yelling at him because these two figures being who he feared rejection from most as he told Mayer he held him in high regard early in Act 2 and Emanuel is, well, his father, puppet master and bully. That's why he's the initial focal point of the dream. A key piece of evidence for this argument is the concluding expository line at the end of the sequence after he's emerged from under the table: "He can no longer see the winning card." Philip is so overwhelmed by this one failure, he can't see how he can win anymore.
However, I too have a winning card that proves my hypothesis: his journal. Throughout Act 2, it is repeatedly brought up that Philip has one. If it had been mentioned once or twice, I would've skimmed over it. However, it is a consistent association. To me, Philip has a journal because he can control it and furthermore, he won't be rejected by it because it is an inanimate object. Philip's RSD is so severe that the only thing he is ever vulnerable with is an object hence why he consigns his dream to his journal. He follows his father's footsteps when it comes to emotional repression and Bobbie will follow Philip's too, the son who caused his dream and made him lose. We also see Philip vulnerable the same number of times we see his father vulnerable, highlighting the cyclical nature of the play.
Before I move on, I want to discuss his approach to marriage because it's an aspect of him that is key to further understanding his psychology.
In the sequence where Philip is attempting to choose a wife, it's staged like a game show. This is clearly showing Philip doesn't care about the women, he just wants to win. He gets a high off of the probability of winning this game because it's new and tipped in his favour. He even uses a point system, that being xyz number out of a hundred. Winning is the lens he sees the world through because it's the only thing that genuinely makes him happy, albeit temporarily
Towards the end of this sequence, the audience is introduced to Tessa Gutzberg, the woman who Philip is clearly most drawn to as he says she's "pointless" and looks starstruck by her. However, it's implied Tessa rejected him as Carrie Laur, who scored the second highest with 85 out of 100, wins. Philip doesn't mind, despite describing her as "not bad" during her brief introduction to us, because he won and if Philip wins, that's all that matters. An extremely strong piece of evidence that illustrates my point is the interaction he has with Mr Bernard Laur, Carrie's father: Philip says to him that Carrie is "adorable" but never shows the audience this before adding that she's "the only daughter without a husband." If it weren't for the methodical tone Simon Russell Beale took for this line, I wouldn't think much of it, but it makes marriage sound as if he's sweeping a floor. Tessa's rejection is probably adding to his neutrality on the subject. However, my impression is, in my opinion, confirmed by the subsequent line: "If I want to marry, I want it with a long string of years ahead of me and not behind." He even wins at predicting the exact date they get married.
During the brief interaction we're granted with Carrie after they've married, we're informed that she is the perfect woman at everything. Based on Adam Godley's delivery of the line: "nothing less and nothing more." It's clear to us that she's just another object in Philip's winning streak; the winning he uses as a coping mechanism to lose himself for however long or short a time that is
Based on all of this evidence, it is crystal clear that Philip doesn't care about who he marries when it comes to them as a person. He just doesn't want to be rejected by society for not taking the typical young man path. His RSD is obviously the root of this and as always, it seeps into yet another aspect of his life: how he treats Carrie. I believe this stems from him subconsciously fearing he will be rejected by her if he is vulnerable and stops being the man of the house late 19th century society expects of a man of Philip's calibre for a single nanosecond. This added pressure is yet another strain on Philip's existence and one he could fix if it weren't for society as well as a problem he wouldn't have had it not been for his father.
And Bobbie repeats his father's attitude in married life with my second favourite character of Simon's in the entire play: Ruth Lamar.
iii. THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE - BOBBIE LEHMAN
By far, my favourite role of Adam Godley's in the entire play and my third favourite character overall, Bobbie's early life is essentially a carbon copy of his father's. He's a wide eyed whimsical little boy who loves drawing and wants to become a painter. However, this is put to a stop by Philip via Bobbie's mother and it's explicitly stated in the exposition that Bobbie becoming a painter is "not a part of the plan her husband has in his journal."
His fate is quite literally written out, as if Philip is some Godlike figure who can control fate. And that's precisely what he becomes: a Godlike figure. As a result of his father becoming the HaShem of New York finance, Bobbie is rendered unable to live up to him until the day Philip dies. Ironically, what he ends up surpassing him in is the basis of his father: greed and power.
Put a pin in this. It'll be important later. For now, I want to discuss a scene I'm going to bring up later so put a pin in this too. Late in Act 2, we see a ten year old Bobbie watching a horserace and his father comes along. He doesn't like the fact Bobbie loves watching the horses run nor does he care that his horse might've lost. He has no ambition and that, to Philip, is failure. Philip then tells Bobbie this: "A horse that wins is worth a fortune, if he no longer wins he loses value." This line has a double meaning: 1) If the company stops winning, they lose everything and 2) Bobbie is the horse and Philip is threatening him. Philip then explains to him how stocks work by telling him an allegorical story about umbrellas. The threat interpretation is strengthened by this line towards the end of Philip's monologue: "If things slide and a company goes wrong, their price goes down, like a losing horse that becomes worthless." He's subtly pressuring Bobbie by twisting what he loves into being linked to the company.
This scene makes one thing glaringly clear: Emanuel is an overt, turned covert emotional abuser whilst Philip is solely a covert psychological abuser.
A couple notes before moving on: Bobbie looks visibly uncomfortable around his father during this scene. He fidgets nervously with his hands and doesn't look at him for a significant portion of this exchange, implying Philip has not spared the rod when it comes to Bobbie.
Immediately after this scene in Act 2, we see more of Bobbie and Philip's dynamic. Unlike the direct way his grandfather dominated his father, Bobbie is permitted to some independence when he's 20 and he begins to pursue art collecting whenever he vacations in Europe. Interestingly, his dad sends him money because he was "born to be the winning card" and sending money is clearly his way of keeping control.
This mistake of detachment is the root of Bobbie rejecting his father's offer to join the board in the next scene.
Well, he deviates for a while.
Alas, we have a little time before we proceed to the full scale of his aforementioned greed and power because we must cover the crash, its' aftermath and how it destroys Bobbie's morals as well as his marriage.
Because his father is ageing, Bobbie is tasked with salvaging by the company when it crashes and is tormented by his idolised cousin Herbert's success at "saving America." He's promoted as America's superhero while Bobbie is sidelined. This sidelining extends to his father, who is thanked via banners at Bobbie's own wedding, which his wife proceeds to tease him over. He cannot shirk either of them. Philip and Herbert are the primary factors that indirectly lead him to divorcing his wife. Bobbie's marriage begins to spiral upon him beginning to build the figurative ark that will save the Lehman fortune post crash and he cannot cope with his wife, Ruth's constant teasing about cousin Herbert. He permeates and severs their love, however it's debatable to say they had any proper love at all. Especially on Bobbie's end. Herbert is essentially his Henry in the sense that Bobbie cannot escape him. Like I mentioned earlier, Bobbie repeats his father's marital personality as he doesn't open up to his wife about his stress; something he obviously learnt from his old man.
Even after his father has died, Bobbie's ascent to the crooked, money covered throne is overshadowed by his father's death. This overshadowing is the last act of direct control his father wields in the entire play because his legacy of control and Bobbie have merged into a disgusting hybrid of power. He has won yet again.
Over the next couple decades, Lehman Brothers becomes the world's financial ogre. Bobbie invests in war and atomic energy in order to expand the company. He even makes them international but at what cost? His soul. His tragedy is his father's: children whose fates were prewritten before they even existed.
And when Bobbie invests in computers, he has a second childhood. Bobbie essentially acts like the leader of a counter-culture commune when talking about the old banks, highlighted when he calls Goldman Sachs an "inner city hospice." He welcomes young people into the company, further emphasising this strange new persona. He's playing hopscotch as he decries these old folk banks, symbolising his second childhood. The exposition even describes him as a "kid."
Exactly like his father's and grandfather's dreams, Bobbie dreams of his worst fear towards the end of Act 3: loss of control. While Philip's dream did involve loss of control, it wasn't about that. Bobbie's, however, is and is the most interesting to me despite not being my favourite of the three ( if you couldn't tell, Philip's dream is my favourite due to Simon Russell Beale's phenomenal acting but the analysis is less interesting to write about as the meaning of it is not subtle ). Bobbie's dream is a retelling of the Tower of Babel, albeit with briefcases and God doesn't need to meddle with the languages. As the stackers are not able to understand one another, the tower collapses. This calls back to a detail I mentioned when analysing Philip's dream: he dreams of the roof of his Sukkah collapsing. However, before his tower collapses, Bobbie has a dictator-like speech about how from the top of the tower "Lehman Brothers will dominate the earth." His father has a similar speech during Act 2 after he's made Lehman Brothers Corporation and shouts about how it's made of "pure adrenaline" and "pure money." Because of his unbelievable greed, he too has become the HaShem of New York finance. And he doesn't tell a single person about his dream. The son once again becomes the father.
In the most absurdist and grotesque sequence in the entire play, Bobbie becomes more and more decrepit as he does the twist whilst a projection of infinite numbers and stocks get more and more blurry the faster he dances. It's the most Brechtian the play gets and it is glorious. He spins upon the wheel built by his grandfather and is completely destroyed by it. If he stops, the economy stops.
His job murders him in all but name.
CONCLUSION?
The Lehman Trilogy is a tale that offers the audience a unique and very public autopsy of a corpse of greed marred by abused children and unprocessed trauma on the ever-changing landscape of 19th and 20th century corporate America. At the core of this play is a cautionary tale about unrestricted power and its' consequences. All in all, it is a personification & emblem of "absolute power corrupts absolutely." Emanuel's bloodline is trapped in trauma. The play is a tragedy because fates that befell all of them could've been prevented had these three men possessed the tools to break the cycle. That is to say, Emanuel's grief caused an ouroboros of trauma that could only end with death.