Andrew Panton on credit crunch satire Make It Happen

The ghosts of the financial crisis stay with us. Nearly 20 years on, the decline in economic activity heralded by the Great Recession (2007-9) has seen lasting impacts. The crisis is widely regarded as the most catastrophic monument for deregulation, and thus one of the most significant events in modern times. We can attribute this reputation to the success of recent dramas like Stefano Massini’s The Lehman Trilogy or Adam McKay’s popular film The Big Short, which digest the abstract economic argot and complex causes behind the crisis into entertainment.

Yet the bursting catalogue of crisis-related media has, so far, never foregrounded the roles which the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) and its CEO Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin played in orchestrating one of the biggest losses in UK corporate history, which also saw Edinburgh centre stage in global events. Andrew Panton, director of the upcoming play Make It Happen, calls it “one of the biggest stories to happen in Scotland” in his lifetime.

Shortly after Panton assumed his post as Artistic Director of Dundee Rep Theatre, V&A Dundee opened. At the opening, he ran into veteran actor Brian Cox, who agreed on a return to the Rep, where he began his acting career 64 years ago. Panton had also been in contact with James Graham, Olivier Award-winning playwright of Dear England and Quiz, about a possible collaboration. The pandemic happened in between, but here we are in 2025, and a collaboration bringing Cox, Graham, the Rep, the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) and Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) is now happening with Make It Happen set to preview at the Rep (18-26 Jul), before transferring to the Festival Theatre (30 Jul-9 Aug).

Make It Happen is the latest in a flurry of plays by Graham which dredge into view themes of political vitality, dissecting systems and tracing origin stories of the crises we experience today. In Fred Goodwin, Graham finds a character whose commitment to privacy in life allows for interpretation and fictionalisation: importantly, as Panton tells me, this play integrates history and fictionality. We can expect informed and biting satire in Make It Happen, a laugh-out-loud funny and entertaining study of one man’s stringent commitment to his ideals – no matter their flaws or contradictions – as his world splinters around him.

Brian Cox and Sandy Grierson in Make It Happen. Image: David Vintiner. 

Alongside Sandy Grierson as Goodwin, Cox stars as Adam Smith, the Scottish liberal economist and author of The Wealth of Nations, whose ideas are typically mischaracterised to validate neoliberal views: Panton says Smith in the play is not necessarily a ghost but a “ghostly” figure of Goodwin’s imagination, for whom Smith is effectively a “poster boy.” It is between these two characters – Goodwin and the embodiment of his beliefs in Adam Smith – that Panton says most of the play’s comedic elements are threaded. 

While Make It Happen may sound like a cerebral exchange of ideas, facts and figures, Panton stresses that as a director he could not be less interested in making “people in [his] audience feel silly or ignorant,” or plays which require a basis of knowledge to understand. Complex data and terminology (“toxic assets,” “shadow banking” etc) will be dealt with in entertaining ways that keep an audience hooked and never distract from the story.

We can expect a technical multimedia approach to storytelling, including videography and contemporary music from the 2000s from artists like Keane, Alicia Keys, The Killers and Franz Ferdinand, which all instinctively signify the new. Movement and choreography with a large ensemble that resembles an ancient Greek chorus (nicknamed throughout the rehearsal process “the Furies”) will saturate the scene as bankers, shareholders, and economists, which conversely implicates Make It Happen in traditions as old as theatre itself. Make It Happen is bound to be as rooted in contemporary contexts and storytelling as it is epic and classically tragic. The tracery and dimensions of tragedy within this play – especially with the hindsight of Goodwin’s inevitable downfall – qualify it as a “contemporary version of tragedy,” according to Panton. 

Panton hopes audiences will gain a better understanding of why the financial crisis occurred (“why there wasn’t cash in the ATMs that day”), why Edinburgh ended up as a catalyst for global crisis, why RBS was effectively nationalised with billions of pounds of taxpayer money spent on bailouts, and why we are still suffering the aftermath in 2025. But for Panton, the story is everything. Make It Happen is bound to offer a high-octane, hilarious, and nuanced account of the events surrounding RBS in 2008, and the CEO in his temple of finance as its walls came tumbling down. 

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Make It Happen, Dundee Rep, 18-26 Jul; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 30 Jul-9 Aug