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Written in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis, The Lehman Trilogy captures the ruthlessness of ambition and the mortality of success. Sam Mendes’s production, covering the rise and fall of one of America’s largest banks, is storytelling at its finest. It follows the Lehmans across three generations as the Jewish immigrant family turns a humble convenience store into a worldwide corporation. The astonishing ensemble work of just three actors portrays every generation, their characterisation and pace complemented by a revolving glass boardroom set and a single piano. Seventeen years after the crash, motifs of tightrope walking and nightmares of runaway trains recall the fragility of power and influence. Mendes does, however, fall into romanticising the old ways of capitalism. The family’s loss of control over the bank is depicted as the point of failure. In truth the way the Lehmans built the company ensured its destruction.
