THE NATIONAL Theatre production of Stefano Massini’s The Lehman Trilogy, directed by Sam Mendes, was remarkable.

It traces the development of US capitalism through the fortunes of the emigre German-Jewish Lehman brothers, whose mid-19th century enterprise in cotton trading evolved over the next century and a half from a family business, mutually beneficial to farmers and traders, into the ruthless banking empire which collapsed in 2008, throwing the world into financial crisis.

Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley are superb. Portraying a gallery of characters, they give the play an intimacy that complements the national and international corporate power-play at the heart of current global chaos. It'll run in the West End from May onwards.