Fact: when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, it was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States.

A disaster for more than just its clients, Lehman’s criminally negligent involvement in the speculative subprime mortgage market pitched a whole raft of equally culpable financial institutions over the edge, precipitating the greatest global financial crisis since the Stock Market crash of 1929.

While arguably equally culpable firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch saw it through with the help of world governments, Lehman Brothers was thrown to the wolves, its name living on in infamy (and that despite the fact that family members hadn’t run the company since 1969!) All of which is why a play that makes you a) understand the GFC and b) actually care about the family behind the tainted brand is a bit of a minor miracle.

Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley & Ben Miles in The Lehman Trilogy. Photo © Stephanie Berger

But The Lehman Trilogy, Sam Mendes thrillingly ambitious, virtuosic staging of Stephano Massini’s 2013 play now playing at New York’s Park Avenue Armory, is far more than a fiscal history...