Photo by Mark Douet
One of the fun revelations from our recent profile with local resident and former U.S. ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. was that in addition to being descended from one of the families behind Wall Street’s iconic Loeb, Rhoades & Co., his lineage includes another familiar financial name: Lehman Brothers.
In the time we spent with Loeb and his wife in their Purchase home, we discussed family and personal histories, politics, finance, and even theater. One tidbit we held back at the time: Loeb was ecstatic about a new off-Broadway production about his family.
“He was also quite excited about The Lehman Trilogy, the play about his ancestors that recently ran at the Park Avenue Armory,” says our writer, Bill Cary. “He saw it three times and met with the show’s three actors.”
Read More: Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Has More Than a Few Stories to Tell
Those actors include Simon Russell Beale (King Lear, Penny Dreadful, Into the Woods), Adam Godley (The Umbrella Academy, Anything Goes), and Ben Miles (The Crown, Coupling) as the eponymous brothers, their children, and their grandchildren detailing 163 years of the financial institution’s history until its catastrophic collapse in 2007.
The play is directed by Sam Mendes (1917, Skyfall, American Beauty), and is told in three parts totaling 3 hours and 20 minutes (including two 15-minute intermissions between parts). The New York Times’ Ben Brantley has already called the play “a juggernaut ride to ruin,” and “Magnificent. A genuinely epic production,” while Gerard Baker at The Wall Street Journal says “You should crawl across broken glass to see [it].”
Though they had just left for a well-deserved warm weather vacation, a spokesperson for the Loebs tells Westchester Magazine they are “delighted with the success of the play.”
Following sold-out runs at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, as well as London’s West End Theatre and The National Theatre, the show is slated to make its Broadway debut at the Nederlander Theatre on March 26. (Previews begin March 7.) See Ticketmaster for pricing.