Six years after it opened on the West End and four since it opened on Broadway, the Tony Award-garlanded The Lehman Trilogy arrives in Sydney, offering audiences a Cadillac-smooth ride through a century and a half of American capitalism, framed by the story of one of its great rise-and-fall stories – that of the Lehman brothers.

Originally written as a five-hour epic poem by the Italian auteur Stefano Massini, this version, adapted into a three-hander by British writer Ben Power, is tightly focused on Henry, Emanuel and Mayer Lehman, Bavarian Jews who arrived in the US between 1844 and 1850. They established a drapery store in Alabama, became cotton brokers after the Civil War and created the foundations for what became one of the highest profile firms to sink into bankruptcy during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

Howard W. Overshown, Aaron Krohn and Adrian Schiller in The Lehman Trilogy. Photo © Daniel Boud

Directed by Sam Mendes on a revolving glass-walled set by Es Devlin, this is a masterful piece of documentary storytelling and a lesson in what happens when ethics are defenestrated in the pursuit of success.

While Henry, Emanuel and...