What could be more timely than an epic, award-winning (Five Tonys) American drama about money issues?

Well, for one thing, no one will ever confuse the Lehman Boys with Willy Loman, the hero of Arthur Miller’s novel. Death of a sellerthe 1949 (Pulitzer, Tony) award-winning American drama about money problems.

In the latter, Willy was a victim of American corporate culture, someone who built his fragile dream on a reality that didn’t really exist.

In the case of The Lehman trilogywhich opened last week at Theater Calgary, American corporate culture is both the hero and villain of a three-hour drama in which almost everything goes well for the Lehmans – until it doesn’t. not so, a century and a half after their arrival at Ellis. Island in New York as Jewish immigrants from Bavaria.

I feel like I’ve been to the longest TED talk in the world! And rather than sending the audience at the Max Bell Theater into the night on a note of uplifting inspiration, the entire multibillion-dollar enterprise that brilliant Bavarian émigré Lehmans built over a century and a half ends up disappearing between the teeth of the economic crash of 2008.

What’s also quite shocking is that during a three-hour TED talk, The Lehman Trilogy is also thoughtful, entertaining and moving.

The story within the story of The Lehman Trilogy is that the entire saga of a century and a half is performed by three actors, who do everything except serve drinks to the audience at intermission.

Michael Rubenfeld, Alex Poch-Goldin and Diane Flacks in The Lehman Trilogy at Theater Calgary until November 3. Photo: Trudie Lee

The patriarch, Henry Lehman (Michael Rubenfeld), a fabric salesman, is the origin story we meet in a modest store in Montgomery, Alabama in the late 1850s, where he opened a small shop with a single brand advertising refined fabrics and costumes.

However, soon after, Henry has the revelation that he needs to expand the line to meet the needs of local residents, many of whom own cotton plantations – and soon after, Henry, with the help of his siblings Emmanuel (Alex Poch -Goldin) and Mayer (Diane Flacks), also sells seeds, tools, boots and straw hats.

And then, shortly thereafter, just like Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift, the Lehmans discovered there were riches to be made as a third-party broker for Alabama cotton and northeastern mill owners of the United States crave it for its booming textile industry. .

“We are middlemen,” Emmanuel explains during a trip to New York, where he discovers two things: you can’t have too much Alabama cotton in your back pocket and New York is the epicenter of American business and the Lehmans must be there. .

Soon, Emmanuel, a relentless guy, has a wife – Pauline – to whom he must propose 19 times before she says yes – and an office in Lower Manhattan, where plans are being hatched to create a new type of investment center called a “stock market” where all kinds of goods can be bought and sold.

But just as Emmanuel might begin to feel comfortable, considering that the cotton trade has made him, by his own description, “one of the richest bachelors in New York”, civil war breaks out, breaking an economic model based on slavery.

“You had to know it would end this way,” said one plantation owner in Alabama, when Mayer made the rounds after the war to try to restock the company with cotton. “This whole enterprise was built on a crime. »

The Lehmans, however, are nothing short of nimble. From cotton, they move on to the coffee trade. From coffee, they move on to railways – the Internet of the end of the 19th century^th century.

When a Lehman dies, a son is born who enters the family business and pushes it into new areas of American business, whether oil, art, horses or entertainment, until ‘until the Lehmans finally realized that they were actually a bank. for investors.

It all unfolds in a screenplay by Stefano Massini, adapted from the Italian original by Ben Power, which at times feels more like a script reading – it’s almost entirely narrated – by the heroic trio of actors, who I hope , are paid by the word. !

It’s an unconventional way to share a three-hour stage story – the only comparison I can think of is The Laramie Project, or another verbatim theatrical production such as Seedsbut it worked for me.

The whole thing, directed by Amy Keith, is minimalist and sober, and is filled with particularly effective projected images (by Haui), particularly for evoking Gilded Age Manhattan. Director Sarah Garton-Stanley does a great job finding a way to tell a huge and somewhat impersonal story about finance and big business (!!) in a way that feels personal and connects us all to the rising fortunes of a very large family business. .

Rubenfeld, as the patriarch Henry, then in a Lehman collection ranging from little children to girlfriends, is wonderful. It has a certain relaxedness and humanity that draws you into a story that sometimes seems to be working overtime to repel you, with its very American dreamscape.

Michael Rubenfeld, Diane Flacks in The Lehman Trilogy at Theater Calgary. Photo: Trudie Lee)

Like Emmanuel and many others, Poch-Goldin is the catalyst for the family’s relentless quest to succeed in America. That it reaches somewhat dysfunctional levels is evident as Emmanuel ages, into his 70s, and still can’t stop coming to work and trying to make smart investments, long after his family bank has reached such a size that a whole apparatus is being set up. paid a lot to do these things.

Flacks brings a very different energy to her multiple roles than the other two, especially since she mostly plays male roles – but that’s something of a relief, in a play very focused on a particular type of character. ‘American. Dream told through the eyes of men and their dreams.

(I feel like, like with the HBO smash Successionthat there is a whole other set of stories and voices that we are not privy to all along The Lehman Trilogynamely the people whose American dream didn’t come true while they helped the Lehmans live theirs, starting with the slaves who picked all that cotton for free but I guess that’s another play.)

The final stages of The Lehman trilogy are marked by the two most traumatic moments in American business history: Monday of 1929 – October 28! — when the stock market collapsed, and then eight decades later, in 2008, when another financial crisis brought down Lehman Brothers for good.

The first big crash is staged in devastating fashion, as a certain Lehman recounts each suicide of a broker unable to understand what is happening, and it all sets in motion a conceit that the Lehman family understands about an economic crisis: some banks must go bankrupt from the start. the crisis to allow the government to preserve bigger and stronger banks as the crisis unfolds, and fortunately for them, they are one of those bigger and stronger banks.

The shock, eight decades later, is that Lehman Brothers, buried in debt by a new ownership group led by an aggressive trader – the family has long since sold the company – discovers that it is the bank of government. will allow you to fail.

Unfortunately, the end of The Lehman Trilogy It’s a bit flat – the company has been sold, and it all plays out like a denouement, as if Travis and Tay-Tay had left the afterparty and all that was left was a room full of employees from Swifties and Ticketmaster.

After spending more than a century with the Lehmans, when their multibillion-dollar private banking firm finally disappears from the face of business, they are nowhere to be found, leaving you wondering who exactly to complain about.

The Lehman Trilogy is at Theater Calgary until November 3. For tickets and information, go here.