The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis presents THE LEHMAN TRILOGY

The Repertory Theater of St. Louis Presents
The Lehman Trilogy 

Sept 5-24 at the Loretto-Hilton Center

 

Winner of the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play!

ST.LOUIS, MO (July 27, 2023) - The Repertory Theater of St. Louis (The Rep) the leading regional performing arts theatre in the Midwest, kicks off its 2023/24 Season with The Lehman Trilogy, the 2022 Tony Award-winning Best Play by Stefano Massini, adapted to English by Ben Power, and directed by longtime American Conservatory Theater’s Artistic Director Carey Perloff. The production runs from  September 5 - 24, 2023 at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Campus of Webster University. 

Performed entirely by three actors and one musician, The Lehman Trilogy is an epic tale of one family’s passionate pursuit of the American Dream and the piercing cost of greed, excess and unbridled power. In the late 1840s, three young brothers from Bavaria arrived in America with near-empty pockets but full of hope and ambition. Over the course of two centuries, their family business grew to unimaginable heights and ultimately collapsed into bankruptcy. A can’t-miss masterpiece that the Boston Globe calls “Absorbing! Ambitious! Superb in execution!”

“The Lehman Trilogy won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2022 for a reason,” said Danny Williams, Managing Director. “It’s an all-encompassing exploration of capitalism and the American Dream told through the lens of one family over generations.  It’s highly theatrical, messy, poetic and morally ambiguous with a dramatic arch and pace that will leave St. Louis audiences on the edge of their seats. It’s the perfect play to kick off our 2023/24 Season and I can’t wait for our audiences to experience this mesmerizing production.”

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 Theatre in Boston and Indian Ink at the Roundabout in New York.

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 Off-Broadway at Red Bull.

Scott Wentworth as Henry Lehman, the eldest brother, resourceful and tenacious; also plays Philip Lehman, Pete Peterson, and others. Credits include a Tony nomination for his role in Welcome to The Club,a musical by Cy Colman and Macbeth at Stratford Festival among others.

Joe LaRocca as the Musician, playing music throughout the play 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 in Maine).

“What drew me to The Lehman Trilogy is the incredibly impressive fact that only three actors play a multitude of roles and embody each with a detailed physicality,” commented Becks Redman, Associate Artistic Director.  “Audiences will be blown away by the nuanced performances as the cast and director lead us through decades upon decades of history in a way that can only be experienced live on stage.”

The creative team for The Lehman Trilogy includes scenic design by Sara Brown (Common Ground Revisited at The Huntington), costume design by Dede Ayite (A Soldier’s Play, Broadway), lighting design by Robert Wierzel (Fela!, Broadway Tony Nomination), sound design and music composition by Mark Bennett (The Coast of Utopia, Broadway), 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 production stage manager is Emilee Buchheit, and the assistant stage manager is Shannon B. Sturgis.

The Lehman Trilogy is produced in association with The Huntington Theater in Boston, which is the first to originate the play in the US and be directed by an American director this past June. 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.  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.

The Lehman Trilogy is sponsored in part by Ann Cady Scott, long time board member and current Vice President of The Repertory Theater of St. Louis’ Board of Trustees.

For more information, please visit repstl.org. 

 

FACT SHEET

The Lehman Trilogy
By Stefano Massini | Adapted by Ben Power
Directed by Carey Perloff
September 5 - 24, 2023 at The Loretto-Hilton Center (130 Edgar Road, St. Louis, MO)
Running time: 3 hours and 20 minutes, including two intermissions

 

TICKET INFORMATION:
Tickets: Purchase tickets online at Repstl.org, by phone at 314-968-4925, or The Rep Box Office will also be available for in-person support at the Loretto-Hilton Center(130 Edgar Rd, Webster Groves), Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m, and 2 hours before curtain.
Rush Tickets: Available for students, seniors, educators, and theatre professionals by calling  the Box Office at 314-968-4925, 1 - 2 hours prior to curtain time.

Group Sales: Discounted tickets available for parties of 10+. Call 314-968-4925 or email mdorn@repstl.org.

ACCESS SERVICES:
Audio-Described Performance: Thursday, September 21 at 7pm – the show will be described for patrons who are blind or have low vision.
ASL Performance: Saturday, September 23 at 1pm -  the show will be signed for the deaf or hard of hearing.
Open-Captioned Performance: Sunday, September 24 at 2pm - an electronic text ticker displays words being spoke or sung onstage
 

SPECIAL EVENTS:
Post-Show Discussions - Saturday, September 16 at 4pm and Wednesday, September 20 at 2pm.
 

MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA:
Press night for critics is Friday, September 8 at 7pm. Please RSVP HERE for press night or other available performances.

Production photos are available for download at https://www.repstl.org/about/press.
 

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

ABOUT THE REPERTORY THEATRE OF ST. LOUIS
The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis (The Rep) is the region’s premiere theatre for compelling, award-winning theatrical experiences that entertain, engage, and illuminate audiences’ shared humanity.  Founded in 1966, for more than five decades The Rep has sustained and built upon its commitment to artistic excellence by creating, developing, and curating adventurous new works and beloved classics from the most exciting emerging and established American voices. The Rep builds bridges within the St. Louis community and beyond by offering productions that allow audiences to see themselves and the stories that matter to them represented on stage, through the organization’s robust community engagement programs, and across its educational initiatives.

The Rep welcomes audiences with inspiring and expansive productions at several inviting stages across St. Louis including the Virginia Jackson Browning Theatre at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts and the Catherine B. Berges Theatre at COCA. A thought leader in the national theatre landscape, The Rep is a dedicated partner with arts organizations in St. Louis and across the country, expanding audiences’ appreciation and understanding of the world through theatre. For more information, please visit repstl.org and follow @repstl.

 

 

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