David Sieradzki

This play is horrifyingly antisemitic - its entire premise is based on the ugly, timeworn trope of money-grubbing Jews whose religion and culture are portrayed as all about greed. The playwright and producers should be ashamed of themselves. (Did the first set of characters really need to repeat - and mispronounce - the Hebrew phrase for “thank God” every time they scored a favorable business deal? Did the playwright really need to portray another character’s dream of climbing up a stack of coins toward the heavens in lieu of Moses’ ascent of Mt Sinai to receive the 10 Commandments??!). The play is also deeply misogynistic: despite the play supposedly telling the history of a family, only one female character appears, and she is portrayed in a particularly nasty way as a shrewish gold-digger who is even greedier than her greedy husband. The only other scene that focuses on women in the family shows a young man selecting a bride by “rating” prospective mates on a scale of 1-100 - like purchasing an object or slave. (Was this supposed to be funny? I don’t think so. And associating this process with Hebrew months and stereotypically Jewish names is another example of the antisemitic tropes that pervade this play.) The final scene of the play turns from mocking Jews to denigrating a Hungarian-American character based on ethnic stereotyping. In addition to the unpleasant substance, the unique style of the play is pedantic - it feels like being lectured (and yelled at) for 3 hours. And the play doesn’t even provide an interesting history of Lehman Brothers; it just portrays an investment company/bank focused on making money, but that’s no different from every other company in the capitalist system. The play thus fails to shed any light on the differences between Lehman and its peers, and Lehman’s unique contribution to the 2008 meltdown.