Review: Make It Happen by James Graham - RBS play starring Brian Cox | Edinburgh International Festival 2025
- Lisa in the theatre
- Aug 3
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 4
Make It Happen is a new play by James Graham, directed by Andrew Panton, that tells the story of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s rise and fall, and of its role in the 2008 global financial crash.
A co-production between Edinburgh International Festival, the National Theatre of Scotland and Dundee Rep Theatre, Make It Happen starring Brian Cox and Sandy Grierson, holds its world premiere in Edinburgh this August - the city that's home to RBS's world headquarters.
Make It Happen ★★★★☆
review: 02 August 2025 | Edinburgh Festival Theatre | Edinburgh International Festival
Did you know that Scotland and Scottish banking was at the heart of the 2008 global financial crash? At the time of the crisis, the largest bank in the world was the Royal Bank of Scotland, headquartered in Edinburgh. Remarkably at that time, the UK also had a Scottish Prime Minister in Gordon Brown, and a Scottish Chancellor in Alistair Darling. When the world's attention turned to Edinburgh for a few weeks in 2008, Fred "The Shred" Goodwin emerged as the villain who almost brought the world's economy to its knees.
Apt, therefore, that Olivier award-winning playwright James Graham's latest stage play about the rise and fall of RBS, Make It Happen, has its world premiere in the city, at the Edinburgh International Festival this month. Graham uses fictionalised satire to tell the terrible tale, turning a complex, potentially dry subject into a scorching dark comedy drama.
Make It Happen centers on Paisley boy, Fred Goodwin - played here with sublime seriousness by Sandy Grierson. Portrayed as a deliciously evil Mr Burns of banking (*excellent*) Grierson is outstanding as he morphs from an ambitious accountant to the ruthless, tyrannical leader of RBS.
Grierson plays Goodwin as a quiet, considered, heartless character and that makes him, and the fallout from his actions, all the more chilling.
Haunted by a national treasure
Goodwin's unchecked ambition, and perhaps foolishness and greed (you decide), almost caused the meltdown of free market capitalism. And therein lies another Scottish connection: Adam Smith, the father of economics, is known as the founder of modern capitalism.
James Graham's excellent script uses a mixture of characters and incidents inspired by real life events, with others entirely imagined. In a delightful piece of Dickensian flair, Make It Happen sees legendary actor Brian Cox return to the Scottish stage for the first time in a decade as Adam Smith's ghost. Haunting the RBS offices and the city of Edinburgh almost 250 years after his death, Smith guides and derides Goodwin's every decision, acting as a sort of sweary Jiminy Cricket. It's surreal but sublime.
The boisterous ghostly role was obviously written with Cox in mind, and he channels his famous 'Succession' Godfather Logan Roy, throwing out some truly epic insults and swearing. Cox doesn't feature heavily in the play, but his every appearance on stage has the crowd cheering with appreciation. It's impossible not to be won over by the sheer joy he radiates playing a 300 year old ghost discovering some of Edinburgh's modern shops and tourist hotspots.
Brian Cox has a voice made for the stage. Crystal clear and powerful, every word he says reverberates around the vast Edinburgh Festival theatre auditorium. He may not have as much stage time as his co-stars, but the 79 year-old national treasure has more than earned his star-billing here.
Dreamlike humour
James Graham's brilliant book effortlessly guides the audience through intimidating subjects like the failure to balance capital and liquidity that led RBS (and the global banking system) to crumble. Director Andrew Panton ensures that any financial jargon overload or corporate stiffness is quickly offset.
Leads Grierson and Cox are backed by a strong ensemble made up of fourteen actors who not only play every other role in the story, but who periodically burst into carefully choreographed song and dance routines.
Make It Happen is not a musical, but it is a play that features music. Franz Ferdinand, Noah and the Whale, and other upbeat, recognisable modern songs are used to inject just the right amount of dreamlike humour into the dark and tragic tale.
In Act II, I wasn't always a fan of the way the video projections were used on Anna Fleichele's otherwise impressive set. I found the extreme close-ups of partial faces bizzare and hard to read (A personal preference - I like to see people's mouths when they speak; It makes it easier to hear.). And I do think that both the immediate and enduring impact of the financial crash on the everyman could have been made clearer and would have added power to the ending.
However Make It Happen is a fantastic piece of creatively staged new writing, and an unapologetically Scottish story. All too often the 2008 financial crash is positioned as an American disaster - the collapse of Lehman brothers, and the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac presented as the epicentre. But with Make It Happen James Graham and Andrew Panton firmly reposition the heart of the tragedy in Scotland - and put a delectable, despicable real-life Scottish villain at the reins.
Make It Happen is as horrifying as it is fun. It's the ideal centrepiece for this year's Edinburgh International Festival. ★★★★☆
Make It Happen plays at the Edinburgh International Festival at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre until Saturday 9 August 2025.
For full cast and creative credits see:
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