Lehman Brothers

This play by Stefano Massini centres around three brothers – Henry, Emanuel and Mayer Lehmann who, one after the other, travelled from German to America in the 1840s and become involved in the business world. In 1850, they established the Lehman Brothers bank.

This epic play follows the career of the Lehman brothers, their tradition-led family life which is characteristic to the Jewish culture and the fate of the bank during half a century on the backdrop of the emergence and rise of the American capitalist economy.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. became a global financial institution and the fourth largest bank in America. In 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy which is considered to be the main driver of the global economic crisis that followed.

The author of the three-act “Lehman Trilogy“ (2012), which was initially mean to be a radio play, rewrote the play for the stage. The play premiered on the stage in 2013 first in French translation and then in Milan in Italy. In 2018, the play opened on West End and it reached Broadway this year.