✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Theatre

The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre

Sam Mendes's generation-spanning finance epic returns to the National Theatre following transfers to the West End and Broadway, and a spate of Tony Awards

19 CW readers are interested
The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre 2018
The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre 2018
The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre Lucy Brooks
Hours after it scooped up five Tony Awards, including Best Play, it's been announced that The Lehman Trilogy will return to the National Theatre in January 2023. Stefan Massini's finance saga opened at the National to critical acclaim in 2018 before transferring to the West End and later Broadway. Casting, dates and booking information for the 2023 run is yet to be announced.

The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre review ★★★★★

Stefan Massini’s sprawling five-hour long play about the Lehman brothers and their now infamous corporation has been adapted and somewhat streamlined (only three or so hours long) by Ben Power. Spanning from 1844 to present day, Sam Mendes directs this American epic about dynasty, greed, and business. Although colossal, absorbing and at times poetic, The Lehman Trilogy makes an impact that still resonates, but is less profound than anticipated.


Massini’s original play starts in 1844 and continues until 1984, before the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in 2008. Yet in this powerhouse production, the catastrophic consequences of the investment bank’s fall act as bookends. The set is the corporation’s high-rise office in 2008, with bankers boxes on the floor, and remains so for the entire saga, rotating around with a panoramic screen behind indexing different times and places. Highly filmic and with piano accompaniment, Mendes allows history to wash over the almost vacant office, as if it were a magical music box.


Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles, and Adam Godley are fantastic as the brothers and their descendants. They speak in third person narrating their characters’ lives with almost no dialogue, using repetition effectively although sometimes overly to signify characters. The effect is not particularly theatrical, more like a novel, but the performances are phenomenal. Beale, in particular, is astounding, transforming from Henry to Mayer’s wife, to Emanuel’s son Philip to Pete Peterson, the first non-Lehman president of the business. While perhaps Miles is the least dexterous at changing characters, the ensemble are crucial to making the epic resonate and all create nuanced and complex characters.



Some aspects of the story are cast over. When Henry (Beale), Emanuel (Miles) and Mayer (Godley) Lehman immigrate to America, their dream of a better life is seemingly celebrated in Power’s script, even as they expand in Montgomery, Alabama due to the cotton empire. There are mentions of slavery and the KKK, but the tools of oppression that allow the Lehmans' success are left peripheral, never explicitly named as enabling their prosperity.


That said, as they grow their business from a clothes shop to a broker company, to a bank and then to a corporation, ominous nightmares about trains, weighty burdens, and the tower of Babel consume the family. There’s a correlation between the rise of their empire and the loss of their faith. The week-long Jewish mourning ritual, shiva, takes days for Henry, but for the family’s descendants takes mere minutes (or none at all). With a powerful climax of the 1929 stock-market crash that foreshadows the company’s fatal destiny, there is a real sense of loss, that something has gone astray.


But whether it be the American dream, connections to their homeland, or family identity, exactly what is lost is left unsaid, and deflates what could be a truly profound ending. Nevertheless, The Lehman Trilogy is still excellent storytelling, and is certainly a strong addition to the National’s programme this year.


What The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre
Where National Theatre, South Bank, London, SE1 9PX | MAP
Nearest tube Waterloo (underground)
Price £TBD
Website Click here for more information



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 1st - 3rd July
Things to do in London this weekend: 1st - 3rd July
Jacquemus X Nike Collaboration
Beige, sexy and sporty: Jacquemus X Nike collaboration drops
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London (Photograph: Peter Lewicki)
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London, 2022

Editor's Picks

Mandy film review
Mandy film review
Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst with his sculpture, Capricorn, 1947 © John Kasnetsis
Review: Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde, Barbican
In The Kindergarten Teacher, Maggie Gyllenhaal operates with alarming kindness
The Kindergarten Teacher review
Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in First Man
First Man film review
Review: Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up, V&A
Review: Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up, V&A
Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki rest up for the heist of a lifetime
Widows film review

What members say

    A must see for SRB, Ben Miles and Adam Godley who are superb at impersonating different characters throughout the evening - watch out when SRB turns up Read more

    Eleonore Dresch

Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

We recommend nearby

  • Green Room

    A great place to eat or relax, the Nation Theatre's Green Room is enclosed in a sustainable garden, which acts as an urban oasis amid the hustle and bustle of the Southbank. The Green Room is open from noon until midnight from Monday-Saturday, and until 10pm on Sundays.

    Read more...

    Culture Whisper is your ultimate guide to the newest, most exciting cafés, bars and restaurants in London and we are sure you will love Green Room!

    Book Map
19

National Theatre

You might like

  • Simon Russell Beale and Leo Bill in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second. Photo: Marc Brenner

    The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, Almeida Theatre ★★★★★

  • Three Sisters, Almeida Theatre review. Photo credit: Marc Brenner

    Three Sisters, Almeida Theatre review ★★★★★

  • Sam Tutty (Evan Hansen), Lucy Anderson (Zoe Murphy) photo by Matthew Murphy

    Dear Evan Hansen, Noel Coward Theatre review ★★★★★

  • I'm a Phoenix, Bitch, Battersea Arts Centre

    I'm a Phoenix, Bitch, Battersea Arts Centre review ★★★★★

  • Twelfth Night, Young Vic Theatre. Photo by Johan Persson

    Twelfth Night, Young Vic Theatre review ★★★★★

  • The Twilight Zone, photo by Marc Brenner @ Almeida Theatre

    The Twilight Zone, Ambassadors Theatre



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×