The Lehman Trilogy for Theatre Royal Sydney in 2024

The National Theatre and Neal Street Productions’ five-time Tony Award-winning Best Play The Lehman Trilogy will come to Theatre Royal Sydney in February 2024 following sold-out runs in London’s West End and on Broadway.

Written by Stefano Massini, adapted by Ben Power, and directed by Sam Mendes with set design by Es Devlin, The Lehman Trilogy features a cast of three playing the Lehman brothers, their sons and grandsons, in three parts on a single evening.

Hailed by The New York Times as "a genuinely epic production", The Lehman Trilogy is the story of a family and a company that changed the world.

A young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside on a cold September morning in 1844, dreaming of a new life in the new world. He is joined by his two brothers, and an American epic begins. 163 years later, the firm they establish – Lehman Brothers – spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy, triggering the largest financial crisis in history. The Lehman Trilogy charts the humble beginnings, outrageous successes, and devastating failure of the financial institution that would ultimately bring the global economy to its knees.

Previous National Theatre productions seen in Sydney include War Horse, based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo (2020), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, adapted from Mark Haddon’s book (2018) and the comedy One Man, Two Guvnors by the renowned playwright, Richard Bean, based on the classic Italian farce The Servant of Two Masters (2013).

Kate Varah, Executive Director for the National Theatre, said, “We are delighted to be returning to Sydney, a city we have enjoyed touring to over the years with much loved National Theatre shows such as War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The Lehman Trilogy, proudly created with our co-producing partner, Neal Street Productions, is a mesmerising, epic tale of the great American capitalist experiment of the last 200 years told through power of an intimate family drama. At its core is a very human story about immigrants trying to make their way in a new world and I can’t wait to share it with audience goers in Australia.”

Commissioned by Neal Street Productions and developed and co-produced with the National Theatre, this production of The Lehman Trilogy premiered at London’s Lyttelton Theatre in 2018.

Following a sold-out run at the Park Avenue Armory in the Spring of 2019 The Lehman Trilogy returned to London for a 16-week run at the Piccadilly Theatre in summer 2019. Following Broadway’s 18-month shutdown, The Lehman Trilogy was the first British play to return (it had previously played four performances in March 2020) for a limited engagement at the Nederlander Theatre. It was the most awarded play on Broadway that year, winning Best Play, Best Director, Best Set Design, Best Lighting Design and Best Actor at the Tony Awards®. It transferred to the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, before returning to London’s West End in 2023 for a 17-week run.

Prior to this, 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. Ben Power was commissioned by Neal Street Productions to create a new version of this epic play, using a literal English translation by Mirella Cheeseman.

The Lehman Trilogy is presented by the National Theatre and Neal Street Productions in association with Trafalgar Entertainment.

The Lehman Trilogy will be playing from 21 February for a strictly limited Sydney only season.

Book here.