Pulse logo
Pulse Region

What's coming off-Broadway this spring

What's coming off-Broadway this spring
What's coming off-Broadway this spring

‘The Lehman Trilogy’

NEW YORK — Three Bavarian-born brothers who first set foot on American soil more than 150 years ago are returning to New York next month, accompanied by a centuries-spanning brood of their descendants. Their names are Henry, Emanuel and Mayer, and they — and their seemingly countless kin — will be reincarnated at the Park Avenue Armory in Stefano Massini’s “The Lehman Trilogy,” an epic tale of financial rise and ruin, directed by Sam Mendes.

This three-hours-plus production features what is surely the largest cast of characters of any play in town. Yet they are embodied by a mere three, seemingly inexhaustible actors with the power to multiply themselves like amoebas: Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley. Though the story they tell — which begins and ends with the world-rocking bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008 — is one of entropy, the play in which they appear promises to be a resounding testament to the regenerative powers of theater.

As befits a sprawling, globe-girdling story of historic transformation, “The Lehman Brothers” has an intricate, multinational pedigree. Massini’s chronicle of a dynasty begun by emigrants to the United States began life as an Italian radio play before making its stage debut in Paris (in French) in 2013. Its Italian premiere was at the fabled Piccolo Teatro in Milan two years later, when it ran a whopping five hours.

Ben Power’s English-language adaptation opened at the National Theater in London last summer, overseen by Mendes, the very busy stage and film director whose gripping production of Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman” is a current hit on Broadway. Power pared Massini’s trilogy to a sleek and unexpectedly lyrical three hours (not counting two intermissions) to be performed almost entirely by three actors on an elegant but nearly empty rotating set (by the ever-inventive Es Devlin).

Otherwise, empty is hardly a word to be applied to this interpretation, as I can attest from seeing it at the National in July. Beale, Miles and Godley fill the stage to repletion, as they assume the varied forms of the dynasty-founding Henry, Emanuel and Mayer — and all subsequent generations of Lehmans.

And their friends, lovers, spouses, customers, rivals, ad infinitum, with a variety that continually astonishes. Unlike investors who lost their fortunes on Wall Street a decade ago, no one who leaves this encounter with the brothers Lehman is likely to walk away feeling poor.

— BEN BRANTLEY

‘Marys Seacole’

Born in 1805 to a free Jamaican mother and a Scottish father, Mary Seacole grew up to become an international businesswoman and freelance nurse, crossing paths with soldiers, royalty and Florence Nightingale.

That would be more than enough material for a straight-ahead bio-drama — but not, it seems, for the always surprising and formally ingenious Jackie Sibblies Drury, whose “Fairview” was one of last year’s best plays. In the deliberately plural “Marys Seacole,” playing through March 24 at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater, everyone in the six-woman cast is a Mary — or a Merry, a Miriam, a Mamie or the like.

The indispensable Quincy Tyler Bernstine appears as the historical Mrs. Seacole in this production directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. The others, whose characters cross continents and time, help raise a central question of nursing even now: Who takes care of the people who take care of others?

— JESSE GREEN

‘White Noise’

No American playwright has contributed more to the churning and ever-evolving conversation about race in these United (and divided) States than Suzan-Lori Parks. This prodigiously imaginative writer, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “Topdog/Underdog,” has addressed the toxic legacy of slavery in a rich assortment of theatrical forms and languages, from the surrealism of her early “The America Play” to the Homeric chronicle “Father Comes Home From the Wars.”

Now Parks is focusing her gaze on interracial friendships in the 21st century with the resonantly titled “White Noise,” which begins previews next month at her longtime home, the Public Theater. Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director, oversees a four-member cast, led by Daveed Diggs (the original Marquis de Lafayette in “Hamilton”) as an African-American man forced to reconsider the depth and danger of the gap between black and white.

— BEN BRANTLEY

‘Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie’

I’m not sure anyone could have imagined a duller setting for a play than a high school faculty meeting, yet in “Miles for Mary,” the theatrical collective called the Mad Ones turned the banality of the break room into a hilarious and ultimately galvanizing off-Broadway hit.

As if to top themselves, the Mad Ones return this spring with “Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie,” set in (a) the 1970s; at (b) a focus group; for (c) a children’s television show. That is all we know, and all we need to know.

Except that the Ars Nova production, which begins performances March 26 at the Greenwich House Theater, features a cast of expertly light-touch farceurs under the direction of Lila Neugebauer, who made “Miles for Mary” so moving behind the laughs. If this is banality, let’s have more!

— JESSE GREEN

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Subscribe to receive daily news updates.

Next Article