Latest news with #MakeitHappen
Scottish Sun
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Brit TV legend cancels string of gigs saying he's ‘very busy and tired'
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) BRIT TV legend pulls plug on tour dates, admits he's 'very busy and tired' - leaving fans disappointed but understanding. The 79-year-old has postponed his national tour just weeks before it was set to kick off. Sign up for the Entertainment newsletter Sign up 3 Brian Cox has postponed his solo tour, "It's All About Me" Credit: Alamy 3 He is currently starring in Make it Happen as Adam Smith in Edinburgh Credit: Alamy The acclaimed actor, recently back in the spotlight thanks to his powerhouse role in the HBO TV drama Succession, revealed the tough decision to cancel his upcoming gigs. Brian Cox, known for his commanding presence on both screen and stage, said the hectic schedule and exhaustion have forced him to take a step back - much to the disappointment of devoted fans. The Succession star was ready to launch his 18-date one-man show — It's All About Me! — starting 1 October at Northampton's Royal & Derngate Theatre, but now fans will have to wait a little longer. Brian told BBC Newscast: "I just thought I'll do it sometime, [October is] just too soon." He also confirmed he's gearing up to take his directorial debut, Glenrothan, to the Toronto Film Festival next month - adding even more to his already packed diary. He said: "It's been very busy and I just thought 'I can't be doing it.'" The Royal & Derngate said its box office would be in touch with any ticket holders, and it was hopeful the show would be rescheduled in 2026. The tour was set to roll into the Corn Exchange in Ipswich on October 3 and the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend-on-Sea on October 20. On launching the tour, Cox said: 'I am looking forward to this tour as it marks something a little different for me - sharing the stage with myself. "As the title indicates, the show will focus more than ever on my life and career. In the second half, the tables are turned and the audience will have the chance to put their questions to me. It should be a lot of fun.' Cox has also been keeping busy treading the boards in Make It Happen in Edinburgh — a new musical delving into the Royal Bank of Scotland collapse and government bailout, with the star taking on the role of free market economics founder Adam Smith. The Emmy and Golden Globe-winning star is also known for his role in the film Manhunter and his stage work with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). The Scottish actor trained at Dundee Rep Theatre before moving on to perform with the Royal Lyceum Theatre, the Royal National Theatre and the RSC, where he gained acclaim for playing King Lear. The news comes after Cox — who first wowed Edinburgh audiences with the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company back in 1965 — hit headlines for speaking out on the current state of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. At a UK Government gathering of cultural leaders at the newly revamped Filmhouse cinema, Cox used the launch of a fresh partnership between the Scotland Office and the Fringe Society to urge a shake-up of Edinburgh's world-famous festivals. 'I sort of find myself in a really weird position,' he told The Herald. 'Everybody's talking about art. I want to talk about practical matters — about how we coordinate everything.' While admitting that a bit of 'chaos' has always been part of the Fringe and International Festival's charm, Cox warned that poor coordination between the two was starting to undermine their success. 'The problem about chaos is it's chaotic,' he quipped, blasting competing box offices and clashing schedules as major headaches for performers and audiences alike. 'There needs to be greater coordination, just practically, in order to make things function properly.' Cox stressed that the real magic lies in the work itself — how it's seen and how people pay for it — not in the organisational mayhem. 'At the moment, half the charm of Edinburgh is its chaos, but that's only half the charm,' he said. He urged organisers to 'think of a way of really coordinating events a bit more than we do, so we can practically deal with stuff that is a little impractical at the moment. "It's just not good enough, quite frankly. "Bugger the art — I'm really worried about bringing it all together properly, without chaos or chaoticness.'
Metro
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Brian Cox, 79, cancels national tour after being ‘very busy and tired'
Actor Brian Cox has postponed his upcoming national tour just weeks before it was due to begin. The 79-year-old Succession star was set to launch his 18-date one-man show – It's All About Me! – on 1 October at the Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton. Cox told BBC Newscast his busy year and packed schedule have left him 'tired' and unprepared for the tour. He said: 'I just thought I'll do it some time, [October is] just too soon.' He also confirmed that he going to take his new film Glenrothan – the first he has directed – to the Toronto Film Festival next month, further filling up his schedule. 'It's been very busy and I just thought 'I can't be doing it,'' he said. The tour would have also included stops at the Corn Exchange in Ipswich on October 3 and the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend-on-Sea on October 20. Recently, Cox has been busy performing in Make it Happen in Edinburgh. The new musical explores the real-life drama of the Royal Bank of Scotland and the government bailout after its collapse, with Cox playing founder of free market economics, Adam Smith. The news follows Cox – who first performed in Edinburgh with the Royal Lyceum Theatre company in 1965 – speaking out about the modern state of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. At a UK Government gathering of cultural leaders at the recently revamped Filmhouse cinema, actor Brian Cox used the launch of a new partnership between the Scotland Office and the Fringe Society to call for a practical overhaul of Edinburgh's world-famous festivals. 'I sort of find myself in a really weird position,' Cox admitted, according to The Herald. 'Everybody's talking about art. I want to talk about practical matters — about how we coordinate everything.' While he acknowledged that 'chaos' has always been part of the charm of both the Fringe and the International Festival, he warned that the lack of coordination between the two was undermining their success. More Trending 'The problem about chaos is it's chaotic,' he said, pointing to competing box offices and fragmented scheduling as major issues. 'There needs to be greater coordination, just practically, in order to make things function properly,' Cox argued. 'The charm is in the work — how we see the work, and how people pay for the work. At the moment, half the charm of Edinburgh is its chaos, but that's only half the charm.' He urged organisers to 'think of a way of really coordinating events a bit more than we do so we can practically deal with stuff that is a little impractical at the moment. It's just not good enough, quite frankly. Bugger the art — I'm really worried about bringing it all together properly, without chaos or chaoticness.' Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. View More » MORE: 'A random woman slid into my DMs – turns out she was my mum' MORE: Harriet Kemsley took me back to her hotel room at the Edinburgh Fringe MORE: Netflix's Cat Cohen had a stroke age 30 and it's a surprisingly hilarious story
The Herald Scotland
03-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Towering performances recall the Blairite era of Cool Britannia
Make it Happen **** Oasis playing their festival busting Murrayfield next week as the Edinburgh International run of James Graham's play about the rise and fall of failed banker Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin comes to a close is a glorious piece of synchronicity. Both are very different symbols of working class aspiration during the Blairite era of Cool Britannia largesse that saw all involved have it large. (Image: Colin Hutton) Oasis's hungry anthem of excess, Cigarettes and Alcohol, even has a lyric that shares the title of Graham's play that becomes Goodwin's mantra for success. The difference between Oasis and Goodwin, of course, is that while one is returning to Edinburgh as conquering heroes, the other was at the centre of the 2008 financial crash after a banking institution was destroyed overnight . Read more Graham's play charts how a ruthlessly driven boy from the same Paisley housing estate as John Byrne and Gerry Rafferty put his faith and whatever assets were going into Kirkcaldy born philosopher Adam Smith's notion of a free market economy. As his missionary zeal saw him become man at the top of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Goodwin dragged a rather dull institution into the twenty-first century as a bigger, shinier brand that was willing to gamble everything, including its customers' money, on having the whole world in Goodwin's hands. Graham, director Andrew Panton and a cast of sixteen led by Sandy Grierson as Goodwin and Brian Cox as Smith render this real life fable as a suitably extravagant satire for the flagship of EIF's theatre programme. There are mass chorales of pop songs accompanied by movement director Emily Jane Boyle's wilfully cheesy dance routines. These are played out on Anna Fleischie's set of skyscraper-like boxes onto which Lewis den Hertog's video design puts even more gloss on things as the bombast of Martin Lowe's score powers out. In a nod to Edinburgh's festival season, a comic corporate presentation resembles A Midsummer Night's Dream's Mechanicals as rendered by a student Fringe troupe. If the high rollers' sharp suited song and dance routines show off stylistic shades of Lucy Prebble's play, Enron, which dramatised the early 1990s American financial scandal, Panton's co-production between EIF, the National Theatre of Scotland and Dundee Rep is just as on the money. At the production's heart are the two towering central performances by Grierson and Cox. Grierson is in typical chameleon-like form as Fred, presented here as a rather sad, pathetic figure without empathy or morality. Grierson doesn't crack a smile throughout, delivering each line with withering intent. Read More: If we never find out what truly motivates him, his Scrooge-like demeanour is something of a giveaway. Cox has a ball as Smith's ghost of free markets past who sets the record straight with Fred inbetween buying scented candles from John Lewis. There is nice support beyond the city slicker types from Hannah Donaldson as Goodwin's in-house lust interest, while Andy Clark plays a convincing Gordon Brown. Goodwin's fall from grace here makes him a folk devil of our time. A whiff of Icarus and a cheque-book load of hubris add to his grand delusion in a show in which money can only talk its way out of trouble for so long.
Channel 4
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Channel 4
Brian Cox on Labour's first year, Farage and his new play on 2008 financial crash
Stardom arrived late for the actor Brian Cox – who achieved global fame in his seventies playing foul mouthed media tycoon, Logan Roy, in Succession. Like Logan, Cox grew up in Dundee, and he's back in the city to star in Make it Happen, a new play about the Royal Bank of Scotland's role in the 2008 financial crash.
Scotsman
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh International Festival: Brian Cox play writer 'still hoping' for call from ex-RBS boss Fred Goodwin
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers 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... The writer behind a play starring Brian Cox which charts the downfall of Royal Bank of Scotland boss Fred Goodwin during the credit crunch has said he is still hoping to contact the disgraced former banker. James Graham, whose latest work Make it Happen is to be performed in Dundee next month before a run at the Edinburgh International Festival, said he had spoken to Scottish bankers, politicians, civil servants and journalists as part of his research - but had not yet heard back from Goodwin. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Graham is also behind plays including Quiz, about the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? cheating scandal, and Dear England, about the struggles and successes of England's football teams, which have both been made into TV dramas. He said he believed his latest work, which he describes as a 'story of Edinburgh society', could also transfer to the small screen. Graham said the idea of the play, which was conceived jointly by Graham with Cox, director Andrew Panton and the National Theatre of Scotland, had appealed to him due to what he perceived as the ongoing social and political fallout from the 2008 financial crash. Fred Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood in 2012. 'I knew I still hadn't made sense of that crisis myself,' he says. 'It was an anxiety I couldn't quite shift about what it was about that moment that feels like we're still living in the shadow of it. But the specificity of seeing it through the lens of Adam Smith and RBS came from the others.' He describes the scope of the story of RBS and former chief executive Goodwin's involvement in the crash as having the potential to be a '16-part Netflix drama in itself'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Edinburgh-based bank, which is headquartered at Gogarburn, faced near-collapse in 2008 and was bailed out by the UK government. Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood in 2012. Graham points to other fictionalised accounts of the crash, such as film The Big Short and Stefano Massini play The Lehman Trilogy. 'As a writer who really enjoys looking at political systems and the paths we get to where we are today, it just feels like, nearly 17 years on, that we haven't really reset and renewed ourselves from that particular crisis,' he says. 'It's the paralysis that we still see coming out of it - intellectually, idealistically - then from austerity to Brexit, to populism to [Donald] Trump.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A key character in Make It Happen is the ghost of 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith, played by Cox. Graham says: 'It delights me, and I find it completely delicious - that the very idea of modern capitalism and free markets and free trade can be traced back to the streets of Edinburgh with Adam Smith 300 years ago. Then there is the horrible poetic delight of [the downturn happening] in that same city in 2008. Playwright James Graham explores the near-collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland in his new play, Make It Happen. | James Chapelard 'They both gave birth to it, and then nearly saw the end of the same thing in the form of RBS, which by that point was the world's biggest bank and the biggest threat to markets and capitalism as we knew it. 'The neatness of that and going 'Christ, what is it about Edinburgh that both started the world and nearly ended the world in one fell swoop?' That just got me so excited.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He recalls his own fears over the crash, which happened in his early days as an up-and-coming playwright. 'My biggest panic at the time was what it would mean for theatre and for the arts,' he says. 'I was sitting watching the Alistair Darling Budget and it was the first time in my adult life where it wasn't just natural progress year on year with more money going to more people. I'd taken that for granted. 'I'd never lived through a recession before and I thought 'what's that going to mean for me?'' Graham says Make It Happen attempts to portray the 'real human cost' to Edinburgh of the time. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I try to frame it through the lens of Edinburgh - of local shopkeepers and businessmen and smaller auditors and accountants and the butcher, the baker,' he says. 'It's about Edinburgh society and what it did to that community, in terms of the shame, this feeling of disgrace and the embarrassment of feeling suddenly like you're the centre of the financial world and then it all collapsing or disappearing. 'As well, it is the pain of that, the human cost and it's really emotive.' Graham, who is known for capturing the zeitgeist of well-known events in his work, admits he often becomes close to the people he plans to write about after meeting them in the course of his research. England footballer Gareth Southgate, whose character features in Dear England, is one subject he has got to know well. Meanwhile, he also counts Quiz stars Diana and Charles Ingram - the couple who shot to notoriety after being found guilty in court of 'procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception' during Mr Ingram's winning Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? appearance - as friends. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Brian Cox plays the ghost of Adam Smith in Make It Happen. | Getty Images 'I find it a real privilege to get to know these people and I actually consider most of them my friends,' he says. 'It's always a thrill when Diana Ingram likes one of my Instagram posts and I go 'but you're a character in my play, that doesn't make any sense'.' Graham has interviewed a range of key credit crunch stakeholders in his research, including BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg and Shriti Vadera, who was the UK government's business secretary at the time of the financial crash. However, Goodwin has not responded. 'We try to get in contact with everybody and invite them to speak,' he says. 'I can only assume, understandably, [Goodwin] probably won't want to. But for me, that's always a pretty fluid, organic process. So maybe closer to the time, I will reach out harder. And he is welcome to reach out to me.' Graham's plays often offer an insight into a more human side to characters based on real people, particularly when many of his audience may already have preconceived ideas about his subject. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It actually is quite hard with Fred Goodwin,' he says. 'He's my protagonist, but most of the world sees him as an antagonist. I would normally have as my central character the heart and soul, the moral conscience of the play - someone who an audience could get behind. 'It's a different contract when the protagonist is someone who has done great harm and the audience will come, understandably, with a huge amount of baggage towards them. It would be really boring drama if a guy walked on who you hated and then you spent three hours hating him. The audience will understand that we have to do something else, but that it's not about vindicating him, defending him or exonerating him.' Graham says he resists the 'stringing them up and throwing vegetables approach'. He instead wants to look at Goodwin's life beyond the public perception of 'greed' and the 'suites at the Savoy', which he describes as 'quite obvious and surface-level stuff'. 'My job is to try to not satisfy the audience's thirst for blood,' he says. 'Instead, I want to create a three-dimensional and even empathetic, if not sympathetic, figure of a human being who has wants and needs and struggles and desires like all of us and who thinks he's contributing to the mass good, even if in hindsight, clearly there were flaws in there. I really want to understand the man and understand the system and the system that he was in. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I wouldn't presume to speak for him, but I can only assume that he thinks he was a symptom of something that was way bigger than him, culturally, and that he just became the face of something that was systemic across our entire financial system.' Graham said he had studied Goodwin's character as far as possible without meeting him. 'He doesn't scream and swear and throw things and bang the table,' he says. 'His power comes from a different kind of status, which I find really fascinating. He comes from a working-class background in a council estate in in Paisley and became one of the most successful private people in the world, achieving that capitalist dream of working your way up with a skill. 'There's things there that you can use to help an audience understand what drives him.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The writer adds: 'But it's always tough to negotiate, and you have to treat that responsibility sincerely and and always understand that this is not your story, and it's not your trauma, and it's not your pain, it's someone else's pain. And that might include a very rich and successful and powerful man, or it might include people who've been arguably the victims of a great legal injustice.' Graham says he believes Make It Happen could eventually be turned into a TV series, adding he would be 'interested' to speak to television executives about adapting it.
