Spare change

Directed by Sam Mendes, the National Theatre’s staging of Stefano Massini’s 2013 play The Lehman Trilogy (which is at the Nederlander Theater through January 2) came to New York’s Park Avenue Armory in 2019, but its planned spring 2020 Broadway debut was postponed for more than a year. Only ninety-nine performances were booked for Broadway, which is a shame because this enthralling piece epitomizes what theater can be: magnificent to regard, trenchantly written, full of fascinating historical information, and deftly acted by a cast of three. It’s a rare masterpiece whose like comes along once every several years, if that often; the only play I’ve seen on Broadway in the last five years that was nearly as good was Mendes’s own previous effort, The Ferryman, the ira...