The multi award-winning actors Adam Godley, Ben Miles and Simon Russell Beale will portray the Lehman brothers in Stefano Massini’s forthcoming epic The Lehman Trilogy, adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes, at the National Theatre this summer.
Three time Olivier nominee Godley (Anything Goes, Broadway), Coupling and The Crown (playing Peter Townsend) star Miles, and Olivier Award-winning stage star Beale (Uncle Vanya, Candide – West End) will play the titular trio in the National Theatre’s forthcoming play, a co-production with Neal Street Productions. Further cast and creatives are to be announced.
On a cold September morning in 1844, a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside. Dreaming of a new life in the new world, he is soon joined by his two brothers and an American epic begins. 163 years later the firm they establish, Lehman Brothers, spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy and triggers the largest financial crisis in history. Stefano Massini’s vast and poetic play unfolds over three parts in a single evening, opening in the Lyttelton Theatre at the National in July 2018.
The world premiere of Stefano Massini’s The Lehman Trilogy opened at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan in 2015. It turned out to be Artistic Director Luca Ronconi’s final production before his death. A long-term admirer of Ronconi’s, Sam Mendes was inspired to begin planning an English adaptation for Neal Street Productions.
From a literal English translation by Mirella Cheeseman, Ben Power was commissioned to create a new version of this epic play, which charts the extraordinary story of a family and a company that changed the world.
Tickets for The Lehman Trilogy go on sale in July 2018.