Brian Cox takes on role of Adam Smith in new show set for Fringe
It was the banking disaster that brought an old Scottish institution to its knees and sent shockwaves around the globe in the worst financial collapse of modern times. Now actor Brian Cox has set his sights on tormenting the man responsible for it.
The Dundee-born star, who played fearsome media tycoon bully Logan Roy in TV hit Succession, is returning to Scotland for his scariest role in decades – as a ghost of one of the country's most famous sons. And Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin is his target.
Cox plays the spectre of Adam Smith, known as the father of modern economics, returning from beyond his 18th century grave to haunt Goodwin, who became one of the most reviled figures in modern Scottish history after his role in the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Smith was a key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, when Edinburgh became a centre of modern philosophy, elevating figures like him, David Hume and James Hutton and their progressive view of civilisation on to the world stage and into history.
And for the 79-year-old actor, haunting the shamed banker from beyond the grave is the theatre role of a lifetime. Cox, who suggested he played the part of Smith himself, said: ' Fred Goodwin was unbelievably self-serving with his singularity of purpose. He certainly wasn't serving his community.
'This guy said he was a follower of Adam Smith but he got it all wrong. Smith wrote two books, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and then The Wealth of Nations, which was all about how wealth is distributed and who it is distributed to.
'When people think about Adam Smith now, they often think it was all about economics. But it was also about moral welfare. And the reason Goodwin got it all wrong was because he only followed only the second book. He didn't see the books in relation to one another. And the degree of selfishness that Goodwin pursued almost destroyed the RBS.'
Cox plays the ghost of the celebrated thinker in a new tragi-comedy by award-winning writer James Graham, opposite Sandy Grierson as the banker responsible for the financial cataclysm.
Dubbed Make it Happen, the National Theatre of Scotland production opened on Friday in the actor's home town of Dundee, and transfers to Edinburgh for the International Festival next month.
Cox said: 'It's 16 years since 2008 so there's enough time passed now to tell the story. It deals with Fred's election right through to his demise. James Graham's script is pure satire. It's brilliant.
'Adam Smith has been summoned as a spirit because Goodwin has made such a mess of things. He's been summoned up because he's the guy who holds the truth. It's told in an original way and it's very funny. Smith came from Kirkcaldy and he can't believe the town produced a prime minister in Gordon Brown.
'It shows the folly of human nature, how we simply don't progress, and how greed is such a curse of who we are. Always wanting more.' The impact of the so-called economic downturn of 2008 can still be felt today after Brown's government pumped £45billion into the stricken bank, recovering only £35billion since. Goodwin had his knighthood removed but retained his £700,000 pension.
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Playwright Graham describes watching the role of then-chancellor Alistair Darling with PM Brown as 'a huge Shakespearean rise and fall'. He said: 'It has always amazed me that there hasn't really been any change in society's model after 2008. We just limped on with the same structures. I wanted to examine that.'
Cox moved to London from the US with his wife Nicole earlier this year but still gets emotional when talking about his home city. Despite major cultural successes such as Dundee Rep, the V&A Museum and Dundee Centre for Contemporary Arts, the city has suffered a rise in social problems, mainly linked to addiction.
Last year a national report revealed a 92 per cent rise in drug-related deaths since 2013. Cox said: 'I've been critical about what's going on in Dundee and I can't keep my mouth shut about it. It goes back to the social engineering decades ago when they moved people out of the cities.
'They did it in Glasgow then they did it in Dundee. You lived with your neighbour for 40 years and then they moved you out and made sure those neighbours didn't live together again.
'A city is the people and when you move them into the outskirts it leads to drug addiction then criminality because that's what happens when there aren't enough community elements in place.'
Cox has held the Tayside city close, filming BBC Scotland comedy Bob Servant there in the 2010s. He even shot an episode of Succession in the city but admits he was annoyed when Logan Roy's background was changed mid-series.
He said: 'I always said he could be Scottish but they insisted American. For nine episodes he was from the States, and from the first episode we were celebrating his birthday and he gave a speech saying he had come from Quebec, which is obviously Canada, not the US.
'Then in the ninth episode of the first series, they suddenly tell me Logan's from Dundee. I was really angry about that. I went up to Jessie and asked him what was going on and he said, 'We thought it would be a little surprise.' Well it was a hell of a surprise.
'I've been playing the part in one direction and then in the ninth episode I'm suddenly a Dundonian. The thinking was that he left Dundee when he was three or four, as part of the transport of kids who went from Scotland to Canada at the start of the war. I accepted that. But it was ridiculous.'
Cox is breaking unfamiliar ground with Make It Happen, testing his range in singing. "I have a duet with Sandy Grierson, apparently,' he said. 'I used to sing when I was younger, and my son is a very good singer but I got nervous about it when the acting all kicked off. I would have liked to have sung earlier on.'
● Make It Happen is at Dundee Rep until July 26 then at Edinburgh Festival Theatre from July 30 to August 9.
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