Producers the National Theatre and Neal Street Productions today announced that the highly lauded, critically acclaimed production of The Lehman Trilogy, which last night won a total of five 2022 Tony Awards® – including Best Play – for its celebrated Broadway run, will return to London’s West End in January 2023 for a strictly limited season.
Dates, including assisted performances, casting and booking information to be announced. Sign up for more news coming soon at thelehmantrilogy.com
This “genuinely epic production” (The New York Times) is the story of a family and a company that changed the world. Directed by multi-Academy Award®, Tony Award® and Golden Globe winner Sam Mendes, The Lehman Trilogy features a cast of three playing the Lehman brothers, their sons, and grandsons, in an extraordinary feat of storytelling told in three parts on a single evening. The decades unfold within the cinematic sweep of designer Es Devlin’s Tony Award® winning set, a “slowly rotating masterpiece” (Variety).
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 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.
Alongside Best Play, Best Director (Sam Mendes) and Best Scenic Design (Es Devlin), The Lehman Trilogy, written by Stefano Massini and adapted by Ben Power, is also the winner of Best Lighting Design (Jon Clark), and Best Actor (Simon Russell Beale) at the 2022 Tony Awards®, making the production the most awarded play at the Tony’s this season. It was also awarded this season’s Drama League Award for Best Play and six Outer Critics Circle Awards, including Best Play.
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. This production opened at the National Theatre in July 2018 before its North American premiere at the Park Avenue Armory in April 2019. The Lehman Trilogy subsequently opened for a 16-week sold-out West End run at the Piccadilly Theatre in May 2019.
Following Broadway’s 18-month shutdown, The Lehman Trilogy was the first British play to return to Broadway — where it had previously played four performances in March 2020 — to run at the Nederlander Theatre for a limited engagement from September 2021 – January 2022. Following its Broadway run The Lehman Trilogy transferred to the Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles from March – April 2022.
Costume design is by Katrina Lindsay, video design by Luke Halls, and lighting design by Jon Clark. The Composer & Sound Designer is Nick Powell, the Co-Sound Designer is Dominic Bilkey, with music direction by Candida Caldicot, and movement by Polly Bennett. The West End Director is Zoé Ford Burnett. Casting is by Jessica Ronane CDG CSA.
