Looking out from the burnt husk of 2021, the 2008 financial crisis seems almost quaint. Did we ever have so much faith in institutions and the infallibility of men in C-suite suits? One day Lehman Brothers was there, one of world's largest, sturdiest investment banks; the next it was gone, liquidated under a cloud of bankruptcy and recrimination. The Lehman Trilogy is about that, but not really: Stefano Massini's electric drama, which opens on Broadway tonight at the Nederlander Theater, is both an immigrant tale and an intimate history, a sprawling family saga and a comic tragedy. (Or is it tragic comedy?) It's also a quintessentially American story, though Massini wrote the original script in Italian and his words have been translated here for the stage by one Brit, Ben Power, and directed by another, Oscar winner Sam Mendes. The three actors in it, too, are all English, and each one a powerhouse: Simon Russell Beale (Candide, Jumpers, Uncle Vanya) plays the paterfamilias and original Lehman, Henry — "the son of a cattle merchant, a circumcised Jew" — who arrives from his native Germany in 1844, one of hopeful millions in search of life and liberty. Landing first in New York then Montgomery, Ala., he's soon joined by younger brothers Emanuel (former Hustle star Adrian Lester) and Mayer (The Great's Adam Godley), though they're equally known by the nicknames accorded to their place and relative value in the sibling order: Henry is the head, Emanuel the arm, and 19-year-old Mayer, the potato. (He's as smooth-cheeked as a tuber, and about as listened to). They're quickly conscripted into Henry's startup business selling fabric and clothing to the working poor of Montgomery, though none of it turns much of a profit until the potato — he's got ideas, that little spud — comes up with an expansion plan that involves moving raw cotton between the plantations and the factories, essentially inventing the concept of the middle man. Business leads the brothers to Manhattan, and the industrial boom there; soon they're not just brokers, they're a whole bank. And as the company grows, so does the family tree: new generations of Lehmans sprouting like so many saplings in the fertile ground of American capitalism. All of those roles, and dozens beyond them — from drawling plantation owners to demure housemaids, toddlers to tightrope walkers — are played by the core trio onstage, each one continuously conducting their own kind of speed-round master class in characterization.