Edinburgh International Festival’s current theme of The Truth We Seek is very much borne-out by its flagship production at the Festival Theatre, Make It Happen, which combines boardroom drama and the truth coming home to bite, in a mordant rise-and-fall satire of the part played by the city’s Royal Bank of Scotland in the worldwide financial collapse of 2008.
The National Theatre of Scotland production, developed with Dundee Rep theatre, follows a clever script by James Graham which, in the manner of the best satire, balances the drama of events, with humour that hits the spot, and songs picked from the early 2000s, which combine to ensure the piece’s pace and buoyancy: for all its ominous portent, it is very funny.
The balance of a long-established traditional bank with its long-standing and well-intentioned modesty of ambition, is upset when Fred Goodwin – brilliantly played with sustained combination of dispassion and growing disquiet by Sandy Grierson – is ill-advisedly allowed to become the Bank’s CEO. Notorious for having made thousands redundant at the Clydesdale Bank, he is mindful of the institution’s vulnerability to corporate takeover in the burgeoning international global financial market, and acts to protect it by acquiring assets – other banks, including England’s NatWest, and any kind of property that counts towards its market ‘value’. He harbours an unshakeable belief in the words of the ‘founder of modern capitalism’, and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Smith.
Any accommodation felt towards Paisley-born Goodwin begins to fray quickly: in an echo of British former Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher, he has cherry-picked from Smith’s work and misunderstood its context, ignoring the man’s advice to use acquired wealth for the good of all, and discards the erstwhile prudent ethos of RBS in favour of growth at all costs, spearheading a full-throttle campaign to become the largest bank in the world – achieved by one final over-reaching megalomaniac acquisition of a Dutch bank.
With contemporaneous events in the US leading to markets levelling-out and then plummeting, this leaves Goodwin’s RBS holed below the waterline, and Scotland itself dead-centre of the global financial crash of 2008. Many of the audience will remember the turn of events, and arguably all of us continue to feel the consequences, and the recent announcement by UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves of a loosening of banking regulations brought in after 2008, are viewed uncomfortably by many.
The play again balances aspects of this rise-and-fall, with weight given not only to the disquiet of the Bank’s shareholders and Board at its unbridled spending, but to the political ramifications faced at the highest level internationally as Chancellor Alistair Darling (played by Sandy Batchelor) and Prime Minister Gordon Brown (Andy Clark) with his Minister Shriti Vadera, played by Charlotte Delima. An unprecedented package of nationalisation of banks has to be undertaken in order to save the sector, on which so much – jobs, homes, savings – depends.
There are plentiful comic touches in the production, directed by Andrew Panton: I noticed a glancing gesture towards the eyebrows when Alistair Darling is first mentioned – the late Chancellor had glorious eyebrows – and Cox’s repeated hauntings of Goodwin as the ghost of Adam Smith (who like Brown was Kirkcaldy-born) are hilarious throughout, particularly his conversion to the delights of department store John Lewis. Goodwin’s request to the Lord Provost to arrange to remove the Edinburgh department store as it hinders the planned expansion of RBS’ headquarters, signifies his incomprehension of the value of institutions, to the capital’s citizens in particular, and the affection in which they are held – including, of course, RBS. Ironic stings surface towards the end, such as RBS in 2025 now being a slight brand-name-only part the reborn NatWest.
While coming with the caveat of being a fictionalised satire inspired by real-life events, with some imaginary scenes, it has to be said that even 17 years on from the collapse of the world economy, the idea of control of institutions by one messianic figure – with its Trump-ish overtones – means that the eternal moral lessons of hubris, that this play teaches so well, are still being learnt.
All images by Marc Brenner.
