The Dundee-born actor Brian Cox will return to the Scottish stage for the first time in a decade to play the ghost of 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.
Brian Cox returns to Scottish stage after a decade as Sherwood writer tackles RBS scandal Succession star will play the ghost of Adam Smith in James Graham’s ‘operatic’ drama about 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.
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”.
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.
