It was the last performance of “The Lehman Trilogy” at the Shakespeare Theatre. We took the Metro, which lets you off on the block of Shakespeare’s Harmon Theatre; nothing could be more convenient. And the round trip only costs us $2 each. But, no matter how convenient, when a 3 and 1/2 hour show starts at 8, and you have to leave the theater, walk about 2/3 of a block to the Metro, etc., you don’t get home until about 12:30 a.m. For us, that’s beyond late these days.

The show is fascinating. Although I haven’t done any fact checking, I would venture to say that this show is a history lesson, a lesson not only in the establishment, growth and demise of the Lehman Brothers’ various business enterprises, but a lesson in long term business economics. On the one hand, it’s simple – buy merchandise and sell it at a profit. Figure out who needs something, and who has something, and become a necessary middleman.

So far, so good. But then there are disruptions. There was, for example a Civil War that destroyed the cotton market, and the Lehman Brothers’ business was at that time all cotton. Later there was World War I, and after that, there was the Great Depression. Throughout all of these cataclysms, the Lehman enterprise held on, when so many others didn’t. But, then, when there were no more Lehmans, and when greed took over and Americans believed that markets would go up and up and up……that’s when the company finally failed. It’s a history lesson – and maybe an economics lesson at the same time.

Of course, beyond the history lesson is the play itself. The Lehman Trilogy has only three actors, each playing multiple roles, each on stage virtually (maybe even actually) the entire 3 and 1/2 hours of the play. Each with thousands of words to say, in different personae, with different accents, even different genders. It was a bravura performance by Edward Gero, Mark Nelson and Rene Thornton, Jr. Thornton is African American. I wondered how he would be playing a 19th century German Jewish refugee, and playing all of these other White parts, especially in the parts of the play set in pre-Civil War Alabama. It worked fine. (I saw from the program that one of the two understudies was a woman, Julie Ann Elliott. I don’t know if she ever had a chance to perform; that would have been interesting – I bet that would have worked, too. And kudos to the unseen Elliott – she had to remember 2/3 of the lines of the play – to be able to go on at a moment’s notice to play either of two of the roles. Wow.)

The structure of the play, with very simple staging, is unique. The multiple roles played by each of the actors transition smoothly. It’s quite worth seeing if you have a chance.

By the way, as to fact checking – which I usually do – in this instance, I didn’t. Because, even though I found this play to be a history lesson, I didn’t think the facts were that important. Uh-oh! Am I on the proverbial slippery slope?

Once we got home and I went to sleep, I had one of my repetitive type dreams. My law firm was falling apart. I had been working hard, but for the past few years, I hadn’t been paid. I always figured that one day, all this would be reconciled, and I would get the hundreds of thousands of dollars I was owed. But I kept putting the day of reckoning off. Now it was almost too late. But who do I talk to? Who do I tell that I haven’t been paid for years? I had worked so hard. But then I remembered. I had never billed any of my clients. And for those clients whose billing responsibility was one of the other lawyers – even when I worked for those clients, I never submitted any time sheets. This clearly would complicate my conversation. What to do?

I had a second dream I remember as well. 8 year old Hannah (not 8 year old Joan, 8 year old Hannah) had received the opportunity to spend a week with a family in Cardiff, Wales, on a program sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, and she really wanted to go. She had to leave in two days, so getting ready was frantic. Then someone asked me about the family she would be staying with and other similar questions. My response was “I have no idea. I am just relying on the Wall Street Journal.” That, I realized this was stupid. But it was too late.