Red Bus Londinium Life

We all loved this sweeping family saga which gave insights into the development (and fall) of investment banks, particularly Lehman Brothers.

It is long and has only three cast members, so is not the show for you if you struggle with you struggle with long spoken shows or actors playing multiple characters.

Hadley Fraser, Nigel Lindsay and Michael Balogun impress in this sweeping epic which uses a stark but fluidly creative staging. It was so clever to use the boxes that those of us alive to remember 2008 (one of my guests was not) associate with the Lehman Brothers collapse.

All three actors play multiple characters but it is always clear which they are. Screens behind the stage help to set scenes (such as burning cotton) with emotional impact.

Despite the show’s detail we still came away with questions but all very satisfied with our evening’s entertainment.

One small wish was whether they could have somehow displayed dates in some way. The script leapt, for example, very quickly from World War 1 to Pearl Harbour and it was sometimes hard to keep up.

That said, the 𝘉𝘰𝘣𝘣𝘺 𝘋𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘵 scenes were fantastic and perfectly captured the euphoria of giddy banking investment success.

Yes, the show is long but there are two intervals (you can pre-order drinks for either or both).