In September of 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent the world plunging into an economic shock, as the fourth largest investment bank in the United States went bankrupt.

Yet, for 160 years, the bank, and the story of Lehman Brothers, was quite literally the story of the American dream and of capitalism itself.

Now that story of the rise and fall of the bank, and of brothers Henry, Emanuel, and Mayer Lehman—which was praised for its runs on London’s West End and on Broadway—has made its way to Calgary as the second production of Theatre Calgary’s 2024–25 season.

The Lehman Trilogy, covers that history from the emigration of the brothers to America, to the American Civil War, through to Black Friday and the Great Depression, right up to the dying days of the bank ahead of the Great Recession.

Sarah Garton Stanley (SGS), director of the Theatre Calgary production, said that what the play does for audiences is humanize a story that most people would be only aware of from front page headlines.

“I also hope that they learn about a period in history and the ways in which these particular decisions were made have impacted our financial system,” Stanley said.

“It’s really just trying to look at what happens when different decisions are made, when deregulation or when regulation, when different taxes or lack of taxes, when people start to think about money in conceptual ways as opposed to a material-based stock, or actually a material like coal, and we move to the shares in coal. It demystifies over 160 years in a way of how we got to now.”

In its initial run on the West End, it was directed by acclaimed film director Sam Mendes of American Beauty and James Bond fame and garnered five Lawrence Olivier Award nominations—eventually winning five Tony Awards in 2022 with Mendes as director when it was shown on Broadway.

SGS said that one of the exciting things for her about taking on the show was that it is a technically demanding play to make work.

“It’s a yarn, in the best tradition of storytelling. You can start at a place and just spool it out till the end, and if you’re an excellent storyteller, then you’re really held through all of those years, all of those tragedies, all of those world events,” she said.

“That’s what this piece is able to do. It’s by weaving the narrators into characters and then back out to narrators. We develop a relationship with them as narrators, but we also develop a relationship with the characters that they that they carry.”

Unusual for a play of this size, it is embodied by just three actors, who act as both the brothers, Lehman scions, supporting characters, and the narrators of the piece.

“The feat really is for those three actors and the production to be able to continue to offer more steam and breath and storytelling energy, so that the audience will be carried along on that journey. It’s a huge journey,” Stanley said.

A story that is relatable to Calgarians

The story of travelling to a different place, and setting up shop to make a life for one’s self, is something that many Calgarians would find familiar in the work said SGS.

“What person who has moved to Calgary from whatever part of the country or internationally has not come with like ‘I want to make my mark.’ It really looks at what making a mark can mean, what the implications of that are, and what it means to allow ourselves to have the permission to dream,” she said.

“Yes, dreams sometimes turn to nightmares, and certainly the American dream. We look at housing right now. We look at certain key problems that are facing obviously us here in Calgary. These are all kinds of byproducts of somebody else who dreamed before us. But doesn’t mean that we should stop dreaming now.”

It’s also a story that, in many ways, is a mirror of actor Michael Rubenfeld (Lucky Number Slevin, Suits), who is making his Theatre Calgary debut as Henry Lehman.

Rubenfeld has returned to Canada, after spending close to a decade working in Poland and connecting to his family’s roots in the country.

“Moving back to Poland was really, for me, a decision to want to reconnect and live next to, and with my history, as much as I can find. Coming back here is fascinating, because I can really feel the difference. People [in Poland] really live with history, which is a long history over 1,000 years. Whereas in Canada, we don’t live with our histories,” he said.

“Our history, it’s very, very fractured. We have many, many different histories. I think that the play in general is certainly asking, or I hope that it is asking the audience to contemplate their own histories, to contemplate where they themselves have come from, and to think about what it means to know to be disconnected from from our ancestors, from our peoples.”

He said that, in a way, the play acts as a restoration of the Lehman name to what the family was about instead of how they came to be conceptualized as a result of the collapse.

“The actual Lehman Brothers, they had nothing to do with the company from the ’60s at a certain point. So when the collapse happened, it wasn’t because of the actual brothers. Now that doesn’t mean that the brothers weren’t also certainly a product of capitalism. There were certainly things to criticize,” Rubenfeld said.

That criticism has come throughout the play’s history, for not emphasizing enough the role of slavery in the early days of the Lehman family’s rise to wealth.

That complicated humanity of the brothers, their family, and capitalism does shine through, said Rubenfeld.

“What’s really important, and what people just don’t know is that this all started from these three brothers, immigrants like all of our families, who came to the new world with a dream, hoping to make and make a better life for themselves… and in a lot of ways, they did that, and they did an incredible job of doing that,” he said.

“Then things went horribly wrong. But the Lehman Brothers themselves, and the Lehman family themselves, had nothing to do with the subprime mortgages at all, but they did start banks. They did come to work in the stock market. It just problematizes the story, and I think, humanizes the story in really important ways.”

The Lehman Trilogy stars Diane Flacks, Alex Poch-Goldin, and Michael Rubenfeld. It was directed by Sarah Garton Stanley, with associate director Tracey Erin Smith.

Set and costume design was by Amy Keith, lighting design by Sophie Tang, composition by Ben Caplan, sound design by Michael Gesy, projections by HAUI, corography by Danielle Desmarais, voice coaching by Jane MacFarlane, and stage management by Sandy Plunkett.

Tickets are available now at www.theatrecalgary.com/shows/2024-2025-the-lehman-trilogy, and audiences are asked to note the different start time from the regular start times for Theatre Calgary productions.

Photos from The Lehman Trilogy