Brian Cox returns to Scottish stage as Sherwood writer tackles RBS scandal
The Dundee-born actor Brian Cox will return to the Scottish stage for the first time in a decade to play the ghost of the Scottish economist Adam Smith, a role he created for himself, in the first major drama to tell the story of Royal Bank of Scotland’s role in the 2008 financial crash.
Cox, whose performance as the ailing patriarch and media mogul Logan Roy in TV’s acclaimed Succession won him a Golden Globe and multiple Emmy nominations, will play the Enlightenment-era economist in Make It Happen, an “operatic in scale” production for the National Theatre of Scotland by the playwright and screenwriter James Graham.
“This is a global story,” said Graham, “but the epicentre was Scotland and Edinburgh in particular.”
Graham was most recently acclaimed for his BBC TV series Sherwood and the hugely popular National Theatre production Dear England, about the England manager Gareth Southgate.
It was while in conversation with Cox, Graham revealed, that the actor “brilliantly identified the long history of that road to 2008, which goes back centuries and begins with Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment”.
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Cox told the writer about his own “personal obsession” with the father of modern economic theory. “I remember one dinner I had with him, I thought maybe the influence of Adam Smith would somehow subliminally move through the play. But he said: ‘No, I think Adam should be there and probably I should be Adam’,” said Cox.
Graham said he was drawn to write about the “long shadow” of the crash and “our inability to reset” after such a catastrophic global event.
It did not result in “a moment of interrogation and the introduction of a new idea”, he said, but rather “we crawled along in the same model”, with resulting unintended consequences including Brexit and the forces that re-elected Donald Trump in the US.
Graham said: “Like all playwrights do, I’m trying to feel the mood of the now, which is very unstable and unsettling and uncertain, and draw a line back to this moment where I think a lot of that uncertainty began to emerge.”
The full National Theatre of Scotland programme, announced on Friday morning, includes three world premieres, a West End transfer, four in-association productions, and six touring productions visiting 33 venues in Scotland and London.
Make It Happen is directed by Andrew Panton, the artistic director of Dundee Rep theatre, where Cox trained as a young actor. The play will preview at the theatre in July, before opening the Edinburgh international festival in August.
The programme also includes Through the Shortbread Tin, a new play by Martin O’Connor, performed in Scots with Gaelic songs, exploring Scottish culture, myths and identity, which will tour rural venues.
Transferring from London’s West End will be David Ireland’s funny and provocative two-hander The Fifth Step, about men, alcoholism and recovery. Small Acts of Love, a collaboration between the playwright Frances Poet and the composer Ricky Ross about the Lockerbie bombing, will be staged in association with the Citizens theatre, which reopens this September.
Graham, who has been celebrated for his treatment of themes within recent social and political history, including the miners’ strike, Brexit and gang culture, believes in the value of theatre in allowing people to examine the nuance of past events that are remembered as purely binary, and offering a rare moment of pause amid an information deluge.
“The relentless stream of information that we receive now doesn’t ever amount to anything – we’re always reacting urgently and probably unreasonably in the short term, every minute, every second, every day. And it means we can’t reflect and see those patterns,” he said.
“That, in some way, goes towards why we don’t have satisfactory answers to some of the greatest questions and challenges that we’re facing as a nation and as a world.”
He added that dramatists had an obligation to dive into controversial areas in order to understand people’s motivations and different points of view. “The silos that we live in are really impenetrable – anything that shakes you out of it, even just for two and a half hours, is good.”
Real life meets the stage
A Knock on the Roof – Khawla Ibraheem (Royal Court, 21 February)
Ibraheem directs and stars in this study of life in Gaza, which is blown apart when a small bomb (the eponymous “knock on the roof”) hits an apartment building and signals to residents they have only five to 15 minutes to evacuate.
Punch – James Graham (Young Vic, from 1 March)
Another ripped-from-the-headlines effort from Graham. This time he tells the true story of Jacob Dunne, a Nottingham man whose violent outburst proves fatal and exposes the toxicity and contradictions of modern masculinity.
Manhunt – Robert Icke (Royal Court, from 28 March)
Raoul Moat’s murderous rampage in 2010 is brought to the stage by Robert Icke, who had huge success last year with his interpretation of Oedipus, which he turned into a political thriller.
Port Talbot Gotta Banksy – Paul Jenkins and Tracy Harris (Sherman theatre, 1 May then touring)
What happens when a Banksy appears on your local garage in south Wales? The answer: chaos. This new play looks at the consequences for local people when a media circus comes to town.
London Road – Alecky Blythe, Adam Cork (National Theatre, from 6 June)
The return of the acclaimed production is a part of Rufus Norris’s final season as NT director. It’s a bold exploration of the true story of what happened when the murder of five women was exposed in Suffolk in 2006.
Small Acts of Love – Frances Poet and Ricky Ross (Citizens theatre, Glasgow, from September)
The Citizens theatre reopens in Glasgow with a new work by the playwright Frances Poet, who turns her hand to the Lockerbie bombing of 1988 and the connections it forged between two communities in the Scottish Borders and New York state.
