The Lehman Trilogy
Gillian Lynne Theatre, London, until January 5
No matter how much you rave about a show the first time around, it’s generally speaking a mistake to see it a second time, and so it has proved with my return visit to The Lehman Trilogy.
Sam Mendes’s production still looks great with Es Devlin’s impressive set of an office suspended above the New York skyline, but, goodness me, it misses the charisma of Hadley Fraser who headlined the production I saw last year. It didn’t help matters that on opening night John Heffman was indisposed and his understudy Leighton Pugh had to stand in for him.
Pugh and his fellow cast members Aaron Krohm and Howard W Overshown do what they can, but the show feels tired. Worse, it feels like a rather long and boring corporate video charting the rise and fall of the Lehman empire and I found my eyelids drooping.
The lustre of Mendes’ name and the hype that surrounded this show when it first opened has meant its backers clearly see it now as a licence to print money, but even on opening night I spotted quite a few empty seats around me. I wouldn’t advise them to bank on this revival making them much of a return.
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