Joshua David Robinson, Steven Skybell, Firdous Bamji & Joe LaRocca to Star in THE LEHMAN TRILOGY at The Huntington

The Huntington has announced the cast and creative team of The Lehman Trilogy, the 2022 Tony Award-winning Best Play by Stefano Massini, adapted to English by Ben Power, and directed by longtime ACT Artistic Director Carey Perloff. The production runs from Tuesday, June 13 - Sunday, July 16, 2023 at the Huntington Theatre (264 Huntington Ave).

The Lehman Trilogy is an epic and timely story of family, ambition, and risk, sprawling across 163 years of history and shining a calculating spotlight on the spectacular rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers, a family and a company that changed the world.

Performed entirely by three actors and one musician, the story follows the original three Lehman brothers, then their sons and grandsons, as they journey from rags to riches to ruin. In 1840s Alabama, a Bavarian immigrant dreams of a better life for his family. By the early 2000s, his descendants trigger unprecedented financial disaster. In a marvel of storytelling, this extraordinary piece of theatre is both an intimate saga about a family and a monumental exposé of unbridled capitalism.

Director Carey Perloff says, "I'm thrilled to be part of Loretta Greco's first year at The Huntington, and to have the opportunity to direct the first American production of this extraordinary play. At a moment when the banking industry is again in upheaval, the story of the Lehman Corporation and its founding brothers feels remarkably immediate and resonant. Our collaboration at The Huntington will give all of us a chance to explore complicated and unresolved parts of America's history from our own point of view. I can't wait to be back on that gorgeous stage, and to celebrate Michael Maso's amazing tenure as well!"

The Huntington's production of The Lehman Trilogy will be the first to originate in the US and be directed by an American director. Perloff's unique vision for the production includes having a musician on stage, playing music throughout the performance to anchor the time and place of various scenes, and a scenic design that features wooden crates and barrels reminiscent of the containers used to store and ship cotton, the original source of the Lehman brothers' wealth.

The Lehman Trilogy has been translated into 24 languages and has received international acclaim from both critics and audiences: The New York Times praised The Lehman Trilogy as "genuinely epic. You're left reeling by the scope and vitality of it." The Hollywood Reporter called it "most thrilling...breathtaking!" Deadline called it, "A masterpiece. A miracle and a spellbinding demonstration of theatre's possibilities." And London's The Guardian called it, "astonishing. An intimate epic about the shifting definition of the American Dream."

Though highly praised around the world, The Lehman Trilogy has been criticized for underplaying the brothers' de facto ownership of enslaved Black Americans, and its non-representation of the African American experience. As the first American theatre company to produce The Lehman Trilogy, The Huntington is committed to engaging in robust conversations about the historical erasures within this work of fiction, the complicated issues the play addresses, and perhaps most importantly, how we as a country, move forward. More information about a series of stimulating events and discussions around the play will be announced closer to the production.

This Tony Award-winning play first premiered in France in 2013 and in Italy in 2015, before the English adaptation debuted at London's National Theatre in 2018, then played the Park Avenue Armory in NYC in spring of 2019. After pandemic delays, The National Theatre production had a limited run on Broadway (Sept 2021 - Jan 2022) and in Los Angeles (Mar - Apr 2022). Stefano Massini also adapted the play into a novel which was translated into English by Richard Dixon and published in 2020.

"Experiencing The Lehman Trilogy was a theatrical revelation," says Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco. "Its epic exploration of capitalism and the American Dream, told through the lens of one particular family over generations, has the messy moral complexity, hubris, and dramatic ferocity of contemporary Greek tragedy."

"As performed simply by three actors inhabiting characters across age and gender," Greco continues, "it is both a staggering, highly entertaining work of the imagination and an uncomfortable and deeply complicated slice of our American history. Like all great works of art, the piece asks seismic questions of us - and we look forward to wrestling with them together, as we work to dream our community and culture forward."

"We are delighted to welcome Carey Perloff back to The Huntington," states Greco. "Her sublime work with actors and her immense talent for conjuring gorgeous epic stories for the stage makes her the perfect director to take on this remarkable reimagining."

The cast of The Lehman Trilogy includes:

Firdous Bamji as Mayer Lehman, the youngest brother, level-headed and a charming mediator; also plays Bobby Lehman and others. Credits include Mary Stuart at The Huntington and Indian Ink at the Roundabout.

Joshua David Robinson as Emanuel Lehman, the middle brother, hot-headed and decisive; also plays Herbert Lehman, Lewis Glucksman, and others. Credits include The Minutes on Broadway and Arden of Faversham at Red Bull.

Steven Skybell as Henry Lehman, the eldest brother, resourceful and tenacious; also plays Philip Lehman, Pete Peterson, and others. Credits include Pal Joey on Broadway and Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof Off Broadway.

Joe LaRocca as the Musician, playing music throughout the play and providing temporal context as the story progresses through the generations. Credits include: Jesus Christ Superstar (50th Anniversary National Tour) and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (Ogunquit Playhouse).

Understudies include Kadahj Bennett, Matthew Bretschneider, Todd Brunel, and Scott Wentworth.

The creative team for The Lehman Trilogy includes scenic design by Sara Brown (Common Ground Revisited at The Huntington), costume design by Dede Ayite (The Bluest Eye at The Huntington), lighting design by Robert Wierzel (Rock 'N' Roll at The Huntington), sound design and music composition by Mark Bennett (Yerma, Ripcord, and A Confederacy of Dunces at The Huntington), also sound design by Charles Coes (A Confederacy of Dunces at The Huntington), projection design by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (Top Girls at The Huntington), and movement consulting by Misha Shields (K-I-S-S-I-N-G at The Huntington). The assistant director is Avital Shira, the voice coach is Lee Nishri-Howitt, and the dramaturg is Julie Felise Dubiner. The production stage manager is Emily F. McMullen, and the stage manager is Lucas Bryce Dixon.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Stefano Massini (Playwright) is the first Italian author to be awarded with a Tony Award. He is an internationally renowned novelist and playwright who regularly contributes to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. For several years he has served as artistic consultant at Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d'Europa. His works, including The Lehman Trilogy, have been translated into 27 languages, and his plays have been performed in more theatres around the world than those of any other living Italian writer, produced as far afield as Iran and Korea, and staged by directors such as Luca Ronconi and Sam Mendes. His most acclaimed works include: Intractable Woman, a decades-long international success; Ladies Football Club, which premiered to wide acclaim in Spain; and 7 Minutes, hailed by LeMonde as a "masterpiece" at the Comédie Française. He has won numerous Italian and foreign awards, including the Premio Vittorio Tondelli, the Premio Ubu, the Tony Award, the Drama Guild Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award. Qualcosa sui Lehman (The Lehman Trilogy) was among the most acclaimed novels published in Italy in recent years and won the Selezione Campiello Prize, the Super Mondello Prize, the De Sica Prize, the Prix Médicis Essai, and the Prix Meilleur Livre Étranger. He is currently creating a new multi-part play about the history of the atomic bomb, entitled Manhattan Project.

Ben Power (Adapter) is a Tony Award-winning writer for theatre, television, and film. Since 2010, he has worked at The National Theatre, including six years as deputy artistic director, and two years programming The Shed. In addition to his internationally successful adaptation of The Lehman Trilogy, his adaptations for the National include DH Lawrence's Husbands & Sons, Euripides' Medea, and Ibsen's Emperor & Galilean. He has worked as dramaturg and writer for companies such as the RSC, Complicite, and Headlong, where he was associate director and created adaptations of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author and Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. Work on screen includes his BAFTA longlisted adaptation of Robert Harris' Munich: Edge of War for Netflix and the BAFTA winning BBC Shakespeare adaptation The Hollow Crown.

Carey Perloff (Director) was artistic director of the American Conservatory Theater from 1992 - 2018 and of the Classic Stage Company from 1986 - 1992. She directed Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll and Schiller's Mary Stuart at The Huntington. At ACT she staged over 100 productions of classical and contemporary plays, including 11 by Tom Stoppard (2 American premieres) and 6 by Harold Pinter (2 American premieres). Perloff has directed at theatres across America including Seattle Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, the Roundabout, and Arena Stage, and across Canada at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, The Arts Club Vancouver, Theatre Calgary, and the Shakespeare Company. As a playwright, Perloff's work has been widely produced. She is the author of Beautiful Chaos: A Life in the Theater (City Lights Books, 2015), awarded the One City One Book "Big Read" Award from the City of San Francisco and Pinter and Stoppard: A Director's View (Bloomsbury Methuen 2022). In 2021, Perloff received a director commission from Seattle Rep to create a new production of the Oedipus cycle with John Douglas Thompson, and recently launched a new digital platform called Tiny Theatricals to share open rehearsals of classical plays for Digital Theatre Plus in London. More information at careyperloff.com

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