Latest news with #MakeItHappen
The Courier
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Brian Cox: 'I was transfixed by actress's stockings and called 'darling' on my Dundee Rep debut'
Brian Cox has recalled being 'transfixed' as he watched an actress's stockings slide down her leg during his first-ever stage appearance at the old Dundee Rep Theatre. As the Emmy-winning Dundee born and bred star of Succession returns to his theatrical roots in Make It Happen, he's spoken with warmth and candour about his formative years as a teenager at the theatre, dating back to the early 1960s. 'The first thing I ever did was a play called The Dover Road,' Brian recalled in an interview with The Courier. 'I was just a wee boy – maybe 15 or 16 – and I was playing a servant. 'I was standing behind a girl, a bona fide actress, and I remember her stockings hadn't been done up properly. 'Slowly, they just came down her leg. I was transfixed!' he laughed. Cox, now 79, is back on the modern day South Tay Street stage more than 60 years after first setting foot in the Rep's original venue on Nicoll Street. That theatre – which tragically burned down on Cox's 17th birthday, June 1 1963 – holds a sacred place in his heart. 'The Rep was my salvation,' he said. 'I left school at 15. My school was a disaster – St Michael's Junior Secondary – designed to send me into the building trade. 'I was meant to be a brickie. But I wanted something different. I wanted to be in the theatre.' It was in the old Nicoll Street building that Cox found not only his craft but his sense of belonging. 'I remember coming into the front of the theatre and this wifie in the box office said, 'You cannae get to the front fae the front, son – you've got tae go tae the back,'' he chuckled. 'So I did. And as I came in the back, I walked into a row between two actors. 'One of them was Nicol Williamson – a big name back then – and they were knocking hell out of each other. I just wanted to get past them and upstairs.' Another unexpected moment was waiting at the top of the stairs. 'There was this guy, just smoking away, and he looked at me and said, 'Are you alright, darling?' 'I thought, bloody hell, this is the place for me. Chaos downstairs, affection upstairs. That contrast – it stayed with me.' During his two years at the Rep, Cox immersed himself in all aspects of theatre life. 'I lived there,' he said. 'I used to sleep under the stage. Never went home to my mum in Tullideph Road. 'I hated where we'd moved to on Brown Constable Street, so I stayed in the theatre.' Those early performances weren't without hiccups. 'One time I had to serve food on stage,' he recalled. 'I got white sauce on my sleeve and leaned across the lead actor – splashed it all over him. 'Another time I dropped a bit of fish on the floor and thought, 'Nobody's looking' – there's a full audience in – and I slapped it back on the plate!' he laughed. The old Dundee Rep may have burned down in 1963, but the fire it lit in Cox never dimmed. After stints performing in temporary venues, he left Dundee to attend drama school in London. It was the beginning of an illustrious journey that would eventually see him become a star of stage and screen, win a Golden Globe and command stages from Broadway to the West End. Cox has returned to Dundee Rep several times since, notably in 1994 with The Master Builder and a special 'Evening With' event. He's now proud to be a patron of the theatre that launched his life. 'Yes, the Rep was great for me. It was my home,' he said. 'When it burned down, I was heartbroken. Theatre has given me everything.' His latest return to the Rep – starring in Make It Happen as the spirit of Scottish economist Adam Smith, a powerful new production celebrating resilience and creativity – feels like a full-circle moment for the veteran actor. 'I just fell in love with the job,' he said. 'That was my vocation. And I was so lucky to be welcomed here – to be part of something. I've never forgotten that.' Brian Cox, who recently called on Dundee's city father to 'sort the f***ing High Street out' in a Courier interview, appears in Make It Happen at Dundee Rep from July 18 to July 26. Dundee Rep artistic director Andrew Panton confirmed that Cox has been living up to his 'sweary reputation' in the rehearsal room. Brian is also set to host another special one-man Evening With Brian Cox' event at the Caird Hall this October. After Dundee Rep, Make It Happen, a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland, runs at the Edinburgh International Festival.
Scotsman
6 days ago
- Politics
- Scotsman
Readers' Letters: Give Edinburgh's Adam Smith statue the Winston Churchill treatment
A reader says the memorial to one of Scotland's most fa mous sons should be given an overdue clean-up Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... I see that the statue of Winston Churchill in London got a sprucing up in advance of President Macron's state visit last week. I wonder if our statue of Adam Smith standing in the High Street in Edinburgh might receive the same treatment? He is about to become even better known with the appearance of Brian Cox as the man himself in the Festival play Make It Happen. In the past the statue was adorned by the attentions of pigeons, which was par for the course, but in recent times seagulls have taken over, and their deposits are much more substantial. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad At a time when there is more interest in public statues, it is really an embarrassment that such a famous Edinburgh notable is evidently neglected by the city. One might go on and include David Livingstone statue near the Scott Monument, for instance. A gull perched atop the statue of Adam Smith in Edinburgh's High Street (Picture: A regular wash would be the ideal, but would a few anti-bird spikes on the top really be unacceptable? Paul Dimarco, Edinburgh Trump's Open It appears the R&A have met with a member of the Trump dynasty regarding the British Open being held at Turnberry (Scotsman, 17 July). I suggest that in keeping with the approach of many world leaders to Donald Trump, when the inevitable happens, the R&A leadership team genuflect appropriately while scattering rose petals at his feet as he is carried up the 18th fairway in the manner of the Queen of Sheba? Maybe King Charles will agree to kiss the ring? Seems reasonable. D Mitchell, Doune, Stirling Life before money Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A Lewis (Letters, 14 July) suggests that government would better take family responsibilities as an example. Now, the first of family responsibilities is to ensure that our children are alive and well. This takes priority over budgetary matters. Hence, the focus on economic growth of the past few decades is inappropriate. Likewise, the current turn towards green energy is more than welcome as it improves planetary viability. Certainly, we would not like energy bills to unduly increase. However, it is appropriate to take into account that the energy company bosses decide the energy prices, not the government. These ultra-rich bosses are not necessarily upwardly mobile as they have often inherited wealth. Nor are they aspiring to be better as they do not necessarily take morality into consideration. Therefore, government taking family responsibilities as an example would entail placing greater priority on ecology and health, not letting ultra-rich bosses get even richer. James McDonald, Edinburgh Heat turned up Paul Wilson advocates that 'some heat should be taken out of the climate change debate' (Scotsman, 17 July). Unfortunately, net zero was discarded into the dustbin of history by the SNP the moment they realised the household debt to decarbonise Scottish homes would exceed £130 billion. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A review of the job losses at Grangemouth, potentially in bus manufacturing at Falkirk and the 200 job losses a week in the oil and gas industry demonstrates that Holyrood has completely failed to organise a 'just transition'. Voters should take this into account when putting their cross onto the ballot paper in May 2026 as going green appears to be a policy where Scots are going poor. Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway Climate questions In my possibly rose-tinted memories of childhood, winters were winters and summers were summers. I'm no knee-jerk denier of climate change or global warming – maybe slightly agnostic on some aspects of the debate – so Paul Wilson's interesting article raised some questions. The Mini Ice Age ending the Medieval Warm Period lasted from around 1300 until about 1850 – when 'pre-industrial times drew to an end' in Paul Wilson's words. So is it not possible that we may now be in a new 'naturally' warm period in the climate cycle, albeit quite possibly exacerbated by our industrialisation since 1850? Even without the effects of any industrialisation, surely it would not be surprising if average temperatures now were higher than those pertaining towards the end of a Mini Ice Age? Also, could we have it credibly explained exactly how the Earth's average temperatures from over 175 years ago were measured, to give such precise comparisons with our 21st century averages? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Maybe one of Paul Wilson's 'perfectly respectable scientists who disagree with the climate alarmists' could comment. John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife Patriotic glue If only one of the boys had come to Bilton School in Rugby wearing a Union flag dress on 'diversity day', then the teachers would have faced a difficult dilemma. Should they support the boy's gender questioning or condemn his patriotism? There was no such dilemma, when 12-year-old Courtney Wright turned up in a Spice Girls-style Union flag dress; she was removed from the class. Other pupils with St George's and Welsh flags were not allowed in. Why are people who clearly have contempt for Britain and native British identities teaching in British schools at all? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad We just can't afford to indulge these people's anti-British bigotry. Pride in Britain and love of this country is the glue which binds us all together, whatever our diverse heritages. Without that common pride, the future will be very dark indeed. Otto Inglis, Crossgates, Fife Something fishy Loch Ness is home to several fish species, including Atlantic salmon, brown trout, sea trout, and ferox trout. You can also find Arctic char, European eels, European perch, and Northern pike. There are also common minnows and sticklebacks. My theory about the Loch Ness monster is as follows: when the fish species mentioned grow to a giant size and break the surface it triggers a sighting. The sightseeing boat of Loch Ness has sonar and has picked up a large contact of something extremely big. Also viewed from this boat was a 6ft pike. Experts agree that it couldn't be a dinosaur. David J Steel, by Newbigging, Dundee Tunnel vision In the Faeroes Islands, an autonomous region of Denmark, with a population of around 55,000, and an economy much smaller than that of Scotland, they have completed a network of tunnels connecting the islands in the archipelago. Something innovative like that simply would not happen in this country; it would be smothered at birth in bureaucracy. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Scotland under the SNP has struggled with completing the dualling of the A9, many years behind schedule. And we have their record on building ferries. It would all disgrace a banana republic. Instead of encouraging go-getting entrepreneurs, we have the dead hand of the SNP and John Swinney-run bureaucrats, wanting only to tax the best and the brightest and eager to squash any blue-sky thinking and instead add another few thousand to the civil service army and increase the welfare bill. Then claim grievance. Yes, it is 2025. It really is time for a change. Alexander McKay, Edinburgh Fruits of our labour Murdo Fraser is right; a wealth tax on farmers (assuming they're working ones) would be a 'nightmare' (Scotsman, 16 July). It is ironic that Rachel Reeves' party once proclaimed, in Clause IV of its constitution, our natural right to the 'full fruits' of our labour – ie no taxation of it. That was binned by Blair and Broon, though Labour chancellors had for decades ignored it anyway. George Morton, Rosyth, Fife Cheap energy Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Jill Stephenson (Letters, 15 July) attempts to defend the UK Government position to refuse to implement zonal pricing of electricity by using the argument that renewable energy is 'heavily subsidised and that the majority of the funding for these subsidies comes from a levy on electricity suppliers which is then passed on to consumers throughout the UK through their electricity bills', and that as there are far more electricity consumers in England, those of us in Scotland are being subsidised. Had she, however, checked the case against zonal pricing which was put forward in the House of Commons by the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, she would have discovered that his reasoning was based on the fact that zonal pricing would have placed areas of England in a less competitive position to that of Scotland when trying to attract industries to locate their businesses. In basic terms, Miliband was protecting southern interests and existing jobs in England at the cost of potentially many thousands of new jobs in Scotland. There is no way that anyone should be trying to dress up this situation to pretend otherwise. Ms Stephenson omitted to mention the fact that the people in those areas of Scotland where the renewable energy is being produced are paying higher electricity charges than consumers in England. Cheap energy is essential to Scotland's society and economy. People living here should not freeze in their homes during winter. Existing businesses that are struggling should be benefitting and new ones given the incentive to locate here. It always surprises me that there are some people currently living in Scotland who keep trying to tell us otherwise. Jim Finlayson, Banchory, Aberdeenshire Write to The Scotsman Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
Daily Mail
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Movie star Brian Cox reveals he and his wife live in separate homes since relocating to London
Many couples may end up in separate bedrooms in their later years. But Succession star Brian Cox has taken things even further by living in an entirely separate home to his wife. The Dundee-born actor and his German-born partner Nicole Ansari-Cox, married in 2002. They share two children and have two properties in the United States, one in Brooklyn and the other in upstate New York with their own bedrooms. But to avoid Donald Trump 's second stint in the White House, the pair relocated to London where they live in separate addresses. He bought a three-bedroom flat in the capital for her but opts to live some nine-minute walk from her in an upmarket area of the city. However, father-of-four Cox, admitted he feels 'nervous' about popping over and told the Times: 'But when I go to her flat I always feel I'm imposing. 'She said, 'Come, you've got to come over. Why don't you come'. I said, 'Well, it's a long walk'. Then I go and I'm fine. But I'm always a bit nervous when I go there.' Cox grew up in a cramped tenement, lost his father to pancreatic cancer aged eight and was largely brought up by his three sisters after his mother's breakdown. The 79-year-old, who is back in the city of his birth to star in the play Make It Happen about the demise of the Royal Bank of Scotland under Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin, said he might not have discovered acting had the family stayed intact. He told the newspaper: 'The irony was that in many ways losing my parents empowered me in a way that I never realised. 'When you've lost your parents - and at that age - you're incredibly free. There's nobody telling you what to do or what to be or where to go. 'So the world is your oyster in a way that you didn't expect it to be your oyster. So you pursue that, which led me to the theatre.' The award-winning actor is known for his stage and film work – including The Bourne Identity blockbuster – hit the big time as foul-mouthed media mogul Logan Roy in the HBO drama Succession which launched in 2018. Mr Cox also revealed his mind turns to how he might die as he gets older. He added: 'My great fantasy now I'm in my late seventies is, 'How am I going to die?' I think, maybe I'll get run over, maybe I'll fall down stairs. A lot of people die by falling. So I'm constantly fantasising about my demise.' He also said he finds it sad to walk around his home city of Dundee now. He said: 'Not because I don't love it, because I do love it. I find it painful to see the neglect.'
Times
06-07-2025
- Business
- Times
Brian Cox: ‘Wealth? I get embarrassed'
Brian Cox is back in the city where he — and the foul-mouthed media tycoon Logan Roy, whom he embodied so terrifyingly in Succession — started. Newly 79, Cox is rehearsing at the Dundee Rep, his first employer after, aged 15, he landed a job as 'assistant to the assistant'. He is starring in Make It Happen, a new play by James Graham, who wrote Dear England for the National Theatre and the BBC's Sherwood. It is a fantastical take on the 2008 fall of the mighty Royal Bank of Scotland under the ruinous reign of its CEO Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin. Cox plays the ghost of Scotland's most famous economist, Adam Smith, who is haunting Goodwin. He is a foul-mouthed spirit. 'It's an infection from Logan,' Cox says, crediting Graham's nod to the meta. In the play Smith, who was primarily a philosopher and did not even recognise the word 'economist', is shocked that he is remembered for his book The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, rather than his earlier Theory of Moral Sentiments. The latter insisted on man's obligations to his fellow citizens; the former has come to be regarded as a panegyric to free markets red in tooth and claw. Yet the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown is a fan and supports attempts to rescue Smith from co-option by 'neoliberal zealots'. He and Cox are old acquaintances. Brown, the actor tells me, would write to him from Downing Street complaining that people were always telling him to smile. So, I say, Laurence Olivier persuaded Mrs Thatcher to take elocution lessons, and Cox taught Brown to smile? 'No, I didn't tell him to smile,' he replies. 'I just said, 'Be yourself.'' For Cox these weeks in Dundee are a family reunion. In the theatre café where, as a diabetic, he is taking a somewhat urgent lunch, he recalls the day more than 60 years ago when he walked into the Rep ('not the same building, but the same ethos'). 'It's always difficult because it's so alien, you know, a working-class kid, virtually an orphan, to come into a situation like this. And that's why theatre is so important to me, because it's family. It really is family. And I've always found that it's family. Sometimes it's not a good family and sometimes it reflects what all families go through, but it's still family as far as I'm concerned.' On arriving that day he witnessed a fistfight between two actors, one of whom was Nicol Williamson, one of the greatest performers of his day. 'The air,' he writes in his delightful memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, 'was blue'. Seeing the young Cox's horror, the actor Gawn Grainger (Zoë Wanamaker's husband, who died only this May) assured him the pair 'were just a little overexcited after a night on the bevy'. I compare his nonchalance to last year when Cox was reported to Equity for losing his temper during rehearsals for a production of A Long Day's Journey Into Night. 'Nicol wouldn't have lasted two minutes today,' he says. 'It's this whole woke nonsense. You can't say boo to a goose. I mean, I just lost my temper and I said, 'I'm not losing my temper at you. I'm losing my temper at me. I'm the one who's having the problem, not you.'' • Brian Cox and his wife: 'We had four years that were pure hell' Cox, whom I have talked to several times over the past two decades, is a warm and generous interviewee and remarkably unlike Logan Roy. Nevertheless, I am reassured that he shares at least some of Roy's takes on wokery. He was certainly keeping them undercover when we talked three years ago alongside his younger and more progressive-minded wife, Nicole Ansari-Cox, whose play She/Her he was producing at the Edinburgh Fringe. She told me firmly that 'trans women are women', and her husband held his counsel. He says now he was being respectful to her work, on which she did 'a fantastic job', but he certainly does not see the trans issue as cut and dried. 'I mean, it's fine to say, 'Well, if you feel you're a boy, let's go down that route and see what that means without actually taking the ultimate step.' Or vice versa. Then you can find out. But at the moment they want to do it all too quickly. I think it creates a lot more problems. It certainly creates a lot more difficulties than it solves.' Ansari, a German actress whom he met in Hamburg while playing Lear and married in 2002, is his second wife — although you may have read she is his third. Wikipedia claims he was married for a year to Lilian Monroe-Carr between 1966 and 1967. 'That was my first mother-in-law!' he exclaims. His actual first wife was the actress Caroline Burt, who divorced him after 18 years in 1986. He was shocked, although in neither of his two memoirs does he paint himself as a devoted or faithful husband or an attentive father to their son and daughter. In contrast his two sons with Ansari have seen much more of their dad. When I first met him they were tiny and he admitted they were rather scared of him, 'this big white-haired figure'. When we spoke again in 2020, during lockdown, he gently complained that the teenagers slept all day, went 'crazy on their devices all night' and burnt popcorn at 3am. They are now in their twenties and over six foot, and he is experiencing parental nostalgia. 'I miss my boys when they were little. They were such a delight. I never felt it with my other family because I was probably too selfish and self-obsessed. But now I just miss them. I miss them terribly.' Cox barely had a paternal model to emulate. His father, a benevolent shopkeeper who lent money to needy customers, died of pancreatic cancer when he was eight. His mother, guilty for 'being on his case', subsequently suffered a series of breakdowns and Cox was largely brought up by his three sisters. 'The irony was that in many ways losing my parents empowered me in a way that I never realised. When you've lost your parents — and at that age — you're incredibly free. There's nobody telling you what to do or what to be or where to go. So the world is your oyster in a way that you didn't expect it to be your oyster. So you pursue that, which led me to the theatre.' • Brian Cox: 'I woke up stark naked holding half of my tooth' Early on he found a father figure in the actor Fulton MacKay (unjustly now mainly remembered for Ronnie Barker's sitcom Porridge), who warned him not to worry about being a star and concentrate on being a good actor. He tells me he is not sure he did want to be a star but it was sound advice anyway. Cox went on to play many of the great Shakespearean roles, including Lear and Titus Andronicus, and enjoyed later success in Hollywood, often portraying villains. Yet in his seventies, thanks to Succession, he did become a supernova of a star. Rare is the day someone does not ask him to tell them, in full Logan Roy, to 'f*** off'. My favourite Roy line comes in the last series when he discusses the chances of life after death: 'You can't know. But I've got my f***ing suspicions.' Cox long ago gave up on his family's Catholic faith but is not uninterested in the subject. 'My great fantasy now I'm in my late seventies is, 'How am I going to die?' I think, maybe I'll get run over, maybe I'll fall down stairs. A lot of people die by falling. So I'm constantly fantasising about my demise.' Believing he was written out a touch early, he has still not watched the seven Succession episodes that followed Logan's death in the final season. I recommend the Logan's funeral instalment in particular. 'I've seen bits of it. I did focus on Kieran [Culkin], who I was deeply fond of. That boy had been out of work such a long time before he did that.' And now he has won an Oscar for A Real Pain? 'For me it's the great success story of Succession that he's got his just rewards.' As for the wealth that late stardom has brought Cox, he is almost contemptuous of it. 'I haven't changed. I'm still the same and this attention to the detail of wealth freaks me out. I don't like talking about it. I get embarrassed. I've got so many clothes now. People just keep giving me clothes. I've got a stylist and all that bollocks. They were talking about how much I earn the other day and I just said, 'I don't want to know that, thank you very much. Please keep that information to yourself.' God almighty! Really? What a responsibility, living up to it apart from anything else.' • Read more theatre reviews, guides and interviews One thing wealth has brought is a separate London home for his wife, to add to the ones they share in Brooklyn and upstate New York. Partly to escape Trump's second term, they are based in Britain now, she in a three-bedroom flat, he nine minutes' walk away over Primrose Hill. He explains the arrangement as an extension of their separate bedrooms in their other homes (they 'visit' each other). 'But when I go to her flat I always feel I'm imposing. She said, 'Come, you've got to come over. Why don't you come?' I said, 'Well, it's a long walk …' Then I go and I'm fine. But I'm always a bit nervous when I go there.' After Logan's backstory was ret-conned to have him born in Dundee, the magnate revisits the city, but when driven to his family home he refuses to get out and look at it. Cox, in contrast, has been back to the cramped, bathless tenement flat he lived in as a child but he finds it painful to walk around Dundee now. 'Not because I don't love it, because I do love it. I find it painful to see the neglect. You see things like this theatre and think, 'Oh wow! Isn't this wonderful?' And the new V&A museum. But then they build that stupid building in front of the V&A!' (It houses Social Security Scotland.) Afterwards I make a trip to his childhood home a 20-minute walk from where we have been talking. It is a granite building with a view of the Tay and does not look uncared for. What surprises me as a southern Englander, however, is that you can buy a two-bedroom flat in the street for just £85,000. It is as Cox says: the wealth of the nation has not rearranged itself northwards for a very long time. And yet from this street, from a home in which three of his sisters shared one settee bed and he and his brother slept together in an alcove, there emerged this volcanic talent. Cox has come a long way, but Dundee deserves to have him back. Make It Happen is at the Dundee Rep Theatre, Jul 18-26, then at the Edinburgh International Festival, Aug 1-9,
The Herald Scotland
06-07-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
The Scottish stage play casting Fred Goodwin in a new light
When the rise and fall of 'Fred The Shred,' the nickname Goodwin earned for his ruthless cost-cutting, is turned into one of the biggest Scottish stage shows of the year, he is expected be cast in a whole new light. Read more: The actor who will play the man who would become Britain's most notorious banking boss has suggested audiences will see a different side to Goodwin – and may even feel empathy for him. Sandy Grierson, who has spoken to a number of former RBS employees as part of his preparation for the National Theatre of Scotland play Make It Happen, said he had been keen to get past his reputation and 'find a way to like the guy.' Former RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin will be depicted in the new stage play Make It Happen. The show, by the leading British playwright James Graham, will see Brian Cox play the ghost of Adam Smith, the 18th century philosopher and 'father of modern economics," who returns to Edinburgh to haunt Goodwin at the height of the crisis crippling RBS. Grierson said the show – which will launch in Cox's home city of Dundee later this month before a run at the Edinburgh International Festival – would grapple with the question of how much blame for the collapse of RBS and the global financial crisis that unfolded in 2008 should 'sit on the shoulders' of Goodwin. Sandy Grierson will play Fred Goodwin on stage in Make It Happen. (Image: Mihaela Bodlovic) Elements of a Greek tragedy – including a chorus, which will feature reimagined pop anthems from the 2000s – will be deployed to recall the rapid expansion of RBS during Goodwin's tenure, when it acquired a string of other banks and cut costs to generate bigger profits. Grierson said Goodwin had been compared to Icarus, the character from Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun, during the making of the show, the first major cultural project to explore RBS's involvement in the global financial crash. Brian Cox and Sandy Grierson will play Adam Smith and Fred Goodwin in the forthcoming stage play Make It Happen. (Image: National Theatre of Scotland/David Vintiner) The actor said: 'He did get the closest to the sun. He got RBS to being the biggest bank in the world. I'm fairly confident that at that time it seemed like the best thing to do. 'Fred Goodwin didn't just do it in isolation. It was a time when everyone around the world was trying to get their bank bigger and bigger so they did not get bought over. You were either a big fish that did the eating or a wee fish that got eaten. Brian Cox and Sandy Grierson will appear in Make It Happen at Dundee Rep and the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. (Image: David Vintiner) 'I think the banks had got themselves into some sort of alchemy. They were in a constant circle of growth. 'The play has a momentum right from the beginning that doesn't stop until all the wheels come off.' The rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland under Fred Goodwin will be explored in the stage play Make It Happen. Graham, whose previous work has brought Margaret Thatcher, Dominic Cummings and Rupert Murdoch to the stage and screen, has suggested that Make It Happen would trace the links between the 2008 financial crisis and the modern-day economic landscape in Britain, as well as explore the working-class roots of Paisley-born Goodwin, the first member of his family to go to university. Key players in the handling of the 2008 financial crisis, including the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Chancellor, Alistair Darling, will be portrayed in Make It Happen, along with a mix of real-life and fictionalised RBS figures. Director Andrew Panton and actor Brian Cox during rehearsals for new National Theatre of Scotland play Make It Happen. (Image: Alastair More) As well as speaking to former RBS employees, Grierson has studied video footage of Goodwin and even walked around the grounds of the bank's vast headquarters complex at Gogarburn, which was built during his tenure. He told The Herald: 'Edinburgh is a small place. I have met people who were involved with RBS and have stories to tell. 'There were lots of stories about 'Fred the Shred' and all of that, but I've been quite keen to get under the surface of that. 'Regardless of the point of view of the audience, I felt I needed to find a way to like the guy. There are people out there who got on with him. He has got friends that still stand by him. 'I think you've got to absolutely take your hat off to his ability. He seems to have been so calm under pressure. It is remarkable. "There is a lot of things you can say about Fred Goodwin, but I think he was victimised to an extent. He put himself in the firing line. 'It seems really weird that he took his eye off the ball so badly. I have still not quite got my head around it. 'I don't think that it's a show that asks you to entirely sympathise with Fred Goodwin. That's not what we are doing. "There is a sort of Greek tragedy vein that runs through it. When you watch a Greek tragedy, you can sort of have empathy with a character without necessarily being on their side. 'Hopefully people will understand what we imagine was fuelling and firing Fred Goodwin.' Make It Happen was developed following discussions about separate ideas for new plays from Graham, Cox and Andrew Panton, the artistic director of Dundee Rep, where the show will launch on July 18. When Make It Happen was announced in January, Cox suggested that Adam Smith had been "constantly misquoted" and had had his writing "hijacked" by politicians like Margaret Thatcher. Grierson said: 'When I first read the play, I loved the idea of the haunting of Fred Goodwin the notion of re-examining Adam Smith, prising him away from the clutches of Margaret Thatcher and investigating him in a more intelligent context than he is often seen and how we imply that Fred Goodwin probably saw him. "Coming into this, I got quite fixated on the bits of footage of Fred Goodwin that do exist. "But I'm aware that I have to perform the play that James has written and the Fred Goodwin that he has written. 'We are dealing with someone who is very tight-lipped and contained emotionally. That is allowed to escape in a pressure cooker kind of way. "When Fred meets Adam, there is certainly scope for your own imagination to let loose a bit more. 'The scenes that James has written between Adam and Fred are great. Fred needs Adam. He can't let him go - he desperately tries to cling onto him.' Make It Happen is at Dundee Rep from July 18-26 and at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh from July 30-August 9
