The Many Faces of Actor Simon Russell Beale TONY WINNER!!!

“There’s a joy in being able to say that I can be anything. It’s about the storytelling technique, isn’t it? It’s like reading a children’s bedtime story; you become the wolf or you become the giant just by believing in yourself to be, at that moment, the wolf without actually changing your essential physical self.” That’s how actor Simon Russell Beale describes the work he does in The Lehman Trilogy which was playing at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles.

This evening, June 12th, Beale won a Tony Award for his performance. Here we revisit our interview with him about the many roles he and his fellow cast-mates play in The Lehman Trilogy (which also won the Tony Award for Best Play and Best Director.)

Beale is part of a cast of three actors (Adam Godley and Howard W. Overshown) who tell and act out the rise and fall of the Lehman family from the moment they first arrive in the United States in 1844 through to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2007. It’s absolutely riveting and amongst the best three hours one can spend in a theatre. Each actor takes on literally dozens of roles throughout the play.

The Lehman Trilogy was written by Stefano Massini and adapted by Ben Powers. Sam Mendes directed the show which debuted at The National Theatre in London.

The US premiere took place at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City and the show recently concluded a Broadway run which will make it eligible for Tony Award consideration. Be prepared for multiple nominations for this play.

Though it all seems effortless now, Beale, in a recent phone conversation, said it wasn’t always that way.

“You should have seen the first performances, they weren’t effortless. Adam and I were joking about the first four performances. I don’t even remember them they were so traumatic. I remember the feeling before the first night and we didn’t know what sort of a beast we had. And the sheer three hour-long effort of it was very, very daunting.”

Beale, who is considered one of the finest stage actors of our time, has received 10 Olivier nominations and has three wins. He has two BAFTA Awards and is so acknowledged for his work he was awarded a Knighthood in 2019. That doesn’t mean he takes himself too seriously.

“I’m a slightly stocky, middle-aged Englishman with a beard and I’m now pretending to be all sorts of different things just because I say so, rather than with any other help. And that’s quite fun. It’s not about emotional expression or effort. It’s about just keeping the mind focused. If you make a mistake, and I don’t think we’ve ever done a perfect performance actually, but if you make a mistake, you just have to forget it and move very quickly on.”

Though Beale speaks of bedtime stories and pretending, The Lehman Trilogy is a quite serious look at the American Dream.

“It’s about the pitfalls of the American Dream as much is about the the achievements of the American Dream. What was intriguing about doing the play, and especially doing the play in the New York, of course, in the city where the evidence of what they did is around you. I do remember going to see the Lehman wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and seeing the art collection and thinking they touched these. Their pictures are up on the wall. This is part of the fabric of the literal bricks and mortar of this city.”

Though the business completely fell apart with greed and avarice coursing through the veins of those who inherited or ran the company, Beale feels it is not his job to pass judgement on the characters or to make a statement about what they did.

“One of my characters has a line where he says ‘No one. No one outside the family would ever fully understand what we’ve done and why we did it.’ And it’s always stuck in my head that phrase. The sheer ambition and the sheer imagination of their business activities is sort of extraordinary isn’t it?“

However, when asked how much is enough, it was then that Beale considered the other side of the equation.

“At the same time, you know, you have to wonder about how much money you need, among other things. How many zeros will satisfy. It does make you think about your own desire for money or need for money. I mean, how much is regarded as a feasible amount? How much becomes no longer really morally right.”

The Lehman Trilogy has been a part of Beale’s life for four years (albeit with a year-and-a-half interruption by the pandemic.) When asked how his relationship to the play has evolved over time it became clear it wasn’t something he’d previously contemplated.

“That’s a very interesting question. Funnily enough on the last two days I suddenly realized I was just sort of repeating stuff without thinking about it. So I’ve started to give myself a challenge to try and make hopefully almost imperceptible changes to the way I did them. For instance, there’s an Irish maid who greets Emanuel when he’s courting his wife, Pauline. She’s got two lines and sometimes I’m just doing it automatically. I wanted to reassess what her attitude to to her little job was in that particular scene, to how excited she was, how shy she was, how she was speaking. It’s literally two lines.”

He then took a moment and pondered some of the other characters he plays on stage each night.

“I think Philip has become tougher. He is the son of Emanuel who takes the company through the 19th century through to the railways and the Panama Canal. I think he’s become harder. But, of course, his relationship with his father and his son has become a little bit more hurtful. He is hurt by them more than he used to be. So tiny little changes of who the person is.”

When the engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre ends Beale will bid adieu to the play and his many roles. As much as he’s worked on the play and enjoyed it, he isn’t sorry to say goodbye.

“I’m only sorry in the sense I’ve done it a lot now. It’s time to go and I’m fairly steely about plays. I’ve only ever really once thought I couldn’t do a play enough and that was the production of The Seagull I did many, many years ago. I say goodbye and close the door and on really.”

Beale, who is a fan of classical music, hosted Sacred Music on television in England. He made a comment on one of the episodes about what he could glean from a portrait of the composer Johannes Brahms and his work just by looking at the portrait. We finished our conversation by my asking what people could learn about him by looking at his eyes in a photo from the end of this production.

“Of course, it’s not for me to answer, is it? It’s very easy to jump to judgment. We have to make assumptions about about rich people, I suppose, or capitalism or something. And it’s easy to be unsympathetic. I hope they would see something that was sympathetic.”

Main photo: Simon Russell Beale in The Lehman Trilogy (Photo by Craig Schwartz/Courtesy Center Theatre Group)