I worked at Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery from 1999 to 2002 and, in hindsight, I see those as some of the most satisfactory years of my professional life. I was working with experienced theatre professionals, a skilled resident company, stellar guest artists, and an MFA graduate program in a theatre dedicated to the Shakespeare canon and new Southern plays. The board seemed to believe in the mission and audiences from around the country would flock to our summer rep season of eight plays – most of them from the canon. I didn’t realize how fortunate I was while I was there.

When I left ASF, it was a “two roads diverged” moment. I could stay in a theatre where I had found a home, or I could opt for academia with better insurance and a chance for future retirement. The choice seemed obvious at the time, but I still wonder what might have happened if I had stayed …

In the years after I left Montgomery, the canon became a smaller part of each season, the summer rep disappeared, the resident acting company was gutted, and the MFA program went back to Tuscaloosa. This season, the only Shakespeare play is a two-week run of Much Ado about Nothing. Disney musicals have begun to pop up with alarming frequency.

For me, the last straw came when I was driving down several years ago for a revival of ASF’s Fair and Tender Ladies, a beautiful original play with music based on a Lee Smith novel. I had been the tour manager for that show’s 2000 national tour. Years later, as I drove through the park for the revived production of Fair and Tended Ladies, I saw a banner on Festival Drive advertising an upcoming production of Menopause: The Musical. Something in me died.

Since then I have carefully chosen whichever ASF productions might be worth my drive to Montgomery. By my careful planning, I am seldom disappointed. Last week, I was moved to make the drive for a production of The Lehman Trilogy, the award-winning play by Italian playwright Stefano Massini, adapted for the English stage by Ben Power.

One of the actors, Brian Kurlander, was at ASF when I was there and I have followed his career on stage and screen in the years since. He is active in Atlanta theatre and when he did The Lehman Trilogy in Atlanta, I thought that it was a play that should be in Montgomery. When it was announced that Kurlander and his fellow actors, Andrew Benator and Eric Mendenhall, would reunite at Alabama Shakespeare Festival to perform The Lehman Trilogy, it was added to my calendar.

The Lehman Brothers dynasty began as an antebellum fabric store in Montgomery run by the three immigrant Lehman brothers – Henry (Kurlander), Emanuel (Mendenhall), and Mayer (Benator). Hitching their wagon to the cotton trade, the Lehmans’ innovative entrepreneurial skills eventually propel them to New York and ascendance to being the fourth largest investment bank in the country. Reckless management by non-Lehman successors and the subprime mortgage crisis led to Lehman Brother’s spectacular Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2008 that was a primary trigger for the Great Recession.

A play lasting over three hours about the rise and fall of a financial institution may not make you want to rush to the theatre, but The Lehman Trilogy disproves any apprehensions about length. It is an American story examining family and capitalism, aspiration and greed, in three hours that rush by tirelessly in a flurry of action and ritual. In The Lehman Trilogy, the three actors play all the roles through all the eras of the bank’s rise and fall. It is a stunning tour de force for actors and the Montgomery production is beautifully staged by Matt Torney with the technical finesse we have always associated with Alabama Shakespeare Festival productions. Everything that is needed to “put on a play” can be found in the detritus around the stage and a fascinating wall full of drawers and niches.

Much of The Lehman Trilogy, especially in the opening sequence, is expository, setting the brothers in Bavaria, from which they came, and in Alabama, from which they tasted the first fruits of prosperity. Once the three principals are established, the breakneck establishment of new characters, associates, spouses, and children unfolds seamlessly. It’s a fast-paced play, full of information and history, presented in a way that allows the audience to keep up. It’s a fetching company of actors at the top of their game who clearly relish the task they’ve been given in a challenging and rewarding work of sure-footed theatrical craft and skill. It’s an immigrant story. Most of all, it’s a story about America. And in Montgomery, a city full of centuries of history, it was special to see a play about a lesser known but essential piece of history in the city where it all began.

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I don’t often go back to Alabama Shakespeare Festival in recent years and I make sure to carefully “curate” (to use an overused word) my selections whenever I do. With The Lehman Trilogy, I wanted to see a play I’ve been curious about and check in on an actor whose career trajectory I have followed since before ASF days (I saw Brian as Ariel in a production of The Tempest in Utah in 1995). It was a good choice and a production that grows and sticks with me the more I think about it.

It’s a play that anyone who is interested in what it means to be American and to chase success in America should seek out. Its pertinence is especially relevant to the present day and our present American “situation.” Anyone who has a chance to catch the production playing at ASF through 2/15/2026 should grab it.