By Lucy Komisar
It’s a bankster thriller, doing to big-time financial charlatans what the play “Enron” did for corporate thieves. And more than that, it takes direct aim and hits the apparition of the capitalists’ god, Adam Smith. James Graham’s “Make It Happen” at the Edinburgh Theater Festival is a guidebook for how financial skullduggery works. And, directed by Andrew Panton, more entertaining than you’ll see on any financial pages.
The villain, Fred Goodwin (Sandy Grierson) got plucked with no particular experience to head the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Taking a cue from how the system works, he takes a domestic bank and starts to expand. He sets about to buy stuff (much of it junk) to build up the bank’s (fake) capitalization to spike the stock price and payouts to shareholders and him and other executives.
And it’s all done with music, which makes the financial corruption easier to take.
So backup, it’s 2008. Remember the market crash that destroyed the lives of millions around the world? Where the bailouts run by their government acolytes went to the culprit banks? And ordinary people lost homes and jobs? What kind of people and institutions did that?
For the UK, where this play is performed, it was Fred Goodwin and the 300-year old RBS. He is an acolyte of Adam Smith, as are all the banksters. “The invisible hand” will create wealth. Governments shouldn’t interfere.
It’s 1992. RBS is the sixth largest bank, now competing against Nat West. Happy about a reduction of regulations. Music, agpipes, pageantry, rock visuals, paeons to the end of history,
A new building opens with fireworks. A special guest is a gray-haired guy with striped shirt and blue vest, the ghost of Adam Smith (the avuncular Brian Cox, his hard face full and rough).
Turns out one of the tricks is to keep bad stuff off the balance sheet. But a gilded angel says, “One day you will be called to turn on each other, Fred.”
Then things start to fall apart, bad real estate deals (buyers can never pay loans), derivates (pretend values based on “if this happens, then”) scams, and other stuff that makes three-card-Monte look honest. It almost collapsed the British financial system.
Enter Labor finance minister Gordon Brown (Andy Clark). Under the handmaid of the corporations Tony Blair, Brown was also a Scottish MP, one of the slimy politicians who wide-eyed couldn’t figure out all this bankster corruption.
Finally, Adam Smith (Cox) appears to declare, “They got me all wrong.” He explains that he never opposed intervention against the natural excesses of the market. That as an economist/moral philosopher he wanted to improve the lives of people. Oh really!!! Have you heard that before?
Fred of course wants to improve stockholder returns by 55%. His own income had increased by 628%!!!
Adam Smith: “Fucking Hell.”
(Applause) This play becomes an argument against capitalism.
Fred argues, “We are the second largest bank in the world” and want to buy the Dutch bank Amro. (It’s a bank noted for corruption.) He throws out the RBS board and among others puts in a pharmacist as trustee.
One of the problems is that these banks don’t lend to the real economy. A lady in a green coat at a stockholder meeting declares that problem was the bank chasing profits instead of long-term investment. The answer of course was /is arrogance, greed and stupidity.
Fred cries to Adam, “What happened? You wrote the bloody bible for wealth creation.”
Adam Smith reminds him, “The wealth of a nation is the standard of life of the people….The goal is to move from selfishness and greed to concern about the citizens of society.”
He says, “Read the book of my moral sympathy with the plight of others.” He says he talked about the invisible hand once. “How many time did I talk about the welfare of others and equality?”
And Gordon says, “You asked for freedom. This is what you did with it.” But he and Labor didn’t stop/regulate them.
In the end, the government moves to fire the CEOs and recapitalize the banks.
But nothing changed. The Labor-Tory Uni-party used people’s money to bail out the banks and allowed them to continue their predatory behavior with no more regulations. Nationalized banks were returned to the banksters. The corrupt British political system has little to fear from theater productions like this, brilliant in its artistry but powerless against a system controlled by big banks and their political acolytes.
Did I say the cast is terrific. Grierson as the guy you love to hate. Like every nonentity with jobs they should not have. And Cox as a spirit of rebellion! His Adam Smith seems alive while Corporate Fred is stultified.
Waiting for it to come to the heart of capitalism, New York!
“Make It Happen.” Written by James Graham, directed by Andrew Panton. National Theatre of Scotland and Dundee Rep Theatre at Edinburgh International Festival. Festival Theatre, 13-29 Nicholson St, Edinburgh. Runtime 2hrs40min. Opened Aug 1, closed Aug 9, 2025.