King Hedley II (Theatre Royal Stratford East, London) Rating: Verdict: Lenny does the hustle The Lehman Trilogy (Piccadilly Theatre) Rating: Verdict: A theatrical landmark Two types of hustler ply their trade on the London stage this week. Spivs and bankers. Lenny Henry is the super-fly spiv in August Wilson's drama set in 1980s Pittsburgh. Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles are the millionaire bankers in Stefano Massini's epic about the rise and fall of the Lehman family. Compare and contrast? Well, Henry's character Elmore lives by his wits on the streets in an American black suburb. Wherever he lays his hat, that's his home. As for the Lehman brothers, they also lived by their wits — first as middlemen for the cotton plantations of Alabama, and then in the dealing rooms of Wall Street. Wherever they laid their bets, that was their collateralised debt obligation. Lenny Henry reminded me of an ageing Huggy Bear from Seventies TV series Starsky & Hutch. He shows up in Pittsburgh's Hills district in pursuit of sixtysomething former nightclub singer Ruby (Martina Laird). She's the estranged mother of the play's title character King Hedley (Aaron Pierre), who's trying to get his life back after being jailed for killing a man who slashed his face. Spiv and polish: Lenny Henry and Martina Laird sparkle in King Hedley II One of his ten plays charting black history through the decades of the 20th century, Wilson writes terrific parts for actors, and Pierre rides his role like he's jockeying a mustang. Henry, though, has the cooler part as the pensionable spiv who'd sell you a watch, handgun or grandma, but he plays within himself, wary of caricature. No danger of that from Leo Wringer, who revels in his role as a religious crackpot; or Laird, who cuts a gorgeous, down-at-heel diva desperate to make peace with her past. The problem is the play is way too long (three-and-a-half hours!) and by the end, we tire of the people we've come to love. Still, Nadia Fall's production is as fine a rendition of the play as you can hope for. It looks and sounds terrific on Peter McKintosh's tumbledown set of clapboard houses. Fall is having a stunning first season as artistic director at Stratford East. The Lehman Trilogy is also three- and-a-half hours long, but my god it packs a lot in. Directed by Sam Mendes, and first seen at the National Theatre last year, it covers the 150-year history of the New York bank that collapsed in 2008. It starts with Jewish emigre Hayum Lehmann opening a tiny drapery in the Montgomery Alabama of 1844. Joined by his brothers, they and their sons steadily diversify into cotton, manufacturing, railways, politics and investment banking. The only thing in short supply in this breathless historical legend is emotional empathy. But as they don't say in Yiddish 'empathy shempathy, who needs empathy when you've got business?' Besides, business more than drives us through a trail of calamities including burnt crops, civil war, world wars, the Wall Street Crash and, finally, the financial apocalypse of 2008. Es Devlin's design is nothing less than imperious, placing the Lehmans in 19th-century suits inside a swish, modern glass office. Even more impressive are the actors. Stout Russell Beale covers the astute and cuddly brothers, handsome Miles does the hardnosed ones, and lanky Godley takes care of the peacemaking, solutions men. Running through the years — and around the stage — like clockwork, their performance is a high-wire act, endurance test and feat of memory. But special mention must be made of pianist Candida Caldicot who plays a score that runs throughout as though this was a silent film. So, even if the story is more interested in money than the human cost of slavery and chaingangs, this show is undoubtedly a theatrical landmark. Bet on it. Open air season goes to town with Wilder Our Town (Regent's Park Open Air Theatre) Rating: Verdict: An elemental pleasure It must be summer because the covers are off at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre — your chance to mingle on the picnic lawn, drift along the bars selling strawberries and cream and £10 'Artisan G&Ts', and get parped out of the gates afterwards by a trad jazz band. Oh, and, in between, to watch a play about life's terrifying transience and persistent underlying sadness, which starts gently enough with a folksy small-town breakfast scene and the milkman arriving in a jingle of bottles, yet ends in a graveyard where the dead regretfully lament their wasted existences. Another G&T, anyone? Edward Albee considered Thornton Wilder's Our Town from 1938 'one of the toughest, saddest, most brutal plays' but had seen so many sappy productions of it that he wished Wilder had added a cautionary note for actors and directors: 'This is a tough play. Stop sitting around pretending it's a Christmas card.' Ellen McDougall's version doesn't even pretend. Melancholy seems to haunt the ordinariness of this play about a play from the start and Rosie Elnile's bleacher-backed stage opens bare, as Wilder stipulated, though Regent's Park, on a blessedly clear evening, added the squawking of parakeets and the occasional light drift of goose-down from the nearby pond. As the omniscient Stage Manager, conjuring and explaining the workings of Grover's Corners like a small-town Prospero, Laura Rogers smartly comes across as both warmly welcoming and coolly mysterious — attached and detached. Francesca Henry and Arthur Hughes are both excellent in the key roles of the teen lovers Emily and George, and there is sound back-up everywhere. Perhaps the comedy in the play is under-worked and the long, two-act first half begins to test the patience. But the struggle of these characters to occupy 'this moment, now' and to appreciate life before it passes gathers extra power in the setting of an actual gathering dusk. Also this season in Regent's Park: Hansel & Gretel, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Evita. If any of those make as poignant a use of nightfall as this Our Town, they'll be doing well. GILES SMITH A glorious way to lose the plot! Anna (Dorfman, National Theatre) Rating: Verdict: Gripping East German audio thriller This incredibly stressful 60-minute East German thriller closes with the cast holding up a message to us killjoy critics. 'Keep us safe. No spoilers.' Having just been shown what happens to someone who doesn't follow the party line, I'll merrily keep shtum. The great innovation of this play, though, is no secret. We see the drably lit apartment in communist Berlin through one long glass wall, but everything we hear comes from a set of stereo headphones. Phoebe Fox is utterly chilling in the title role of Anna The play was 'created' by writer Ella Hickson and sound geniuses Ben and Max Ringham; the drama reverse-engineered to fit the technology. As this dark, brilliantly unsettling tale of paranoia, perception and lies upon lies plays out, we hear everything Anna hears. Her left ear is our left ear, her right, our right. It's live podcast theatre and it thrills like no other. In the throes of a noisy party we hear the threats and reassurances oh so quietly whispered into her ears. Snatches of conversation are tuned into, you get the rustle of a coat as it's nervously taken off, or the slight waver of an exhale mid terrified cigarette. It's theatrical eavesdropping. I have no idea how they did it, because to look at sleek, suave Anna (Phoebe Fox) you couldn't tell that her head was wired up like a telecoms mast. Fox is outstanding. She loses the plot incredibly well and has such a sharp, dark edge. Max Bennett (as her husband's mysterious boss) terrifies in the calmest, seemingly gentlest ways, and director Natalie Abrahami marshals some glorious frights — the man next to me actually jumped in his chair at one point. This taut and short drama whips through fright, menace and numerous twists in no time, and plays so much of it through the smallest of expressions. All that and you leave before the sun has even set. Marvellous. LUKE JONES All rights reserved for this news site dailymail and under his responsibility