Almost 16 years after the collapse that triggered global financial panic, The Lehman Trilogy lands on Australian stages this month, to tell the story of the bank that was not, in fact, too big to fail. And if you think you’ve heard it all, not quite: Ben Power’s play, adapted from Stefano Massini’s Italian text and directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes in this Tony Award-winning production, is the story of the family who built the bank.
Framed as a corporate thriller, the play opens in an empty boardroom in midtown Manhattan, strewn with file boxes, a janitor tidying the room while a radio unspools news headlines: Lehman has collapsed, and the world is waiting to hear whether or not it will be bailed out. We then zoom back to 1844, and the arrival on a New York dock of Heyum Lehmann, son of a Jewish cattle merchant from Rimpar, Bavaria, ready to stake his own claim to a slice of the American dream – under his newly anglicised name: “Henry Lehman” (Adrian Schiller).
