Make It Happen starring Sandy Grierson and Brian Cox (Edinburgh International Festival) - ★★★★ REVIEW

Summary

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Podcast Summary: MickeyJoTheatre – Make It Happen Starring Sandy Grierson and Brian Cox (Edinburgh International Festival) - ★★★★ REVIEW

Host: Mickey Jo (MickeyJoTheatre)
Date: August 16, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Mickey Jo delivers an in-depth review of Make It Happen, a new play by James Graham presented at the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival. The play dramatizes the notorious 2008 collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), starring Sandy Grierson as Fred Goodwin and Brian Cox in a quirky turn as the ghost of Adam Smith. Mickey Jo explores the show's history, style, staging, and emotional impact, weighing its theatrical strengths and narrative shortcomings for both Scottish and broader audiences.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Festival Context & Production Background

• Not Fringe, but International Festival:
  • Unlike many other shows at Edinburgh this year, Make It Happen is part of the Edinburgh International Festival, which Mickey Jo reminds listeners pre-dates the better-known Fringe (02:41).
  • The production is a high-profile collaboration involving the National Theatre of Scotland, Dundee Rep, Playful Productions, and Neal Street Productions.
  • Sold-out performances indicate strong public interest, and Mickey Jo anticipates a future life for the play.

2. Thematic Exploration & James Graham's Approach

• James Graham’s History Plays:
  • Renowned for dramatizing pivotal but overlooked events, Graham aims not just for a factual retelling but draws contemporary relevance and explores the human condition (03:39).
  • ‘He has this brilliant way ... of taking a moment in history, a seemingly unimportant moment in history, and identifying not only why it was pivotal ... but also bringing it into conversation with where we are now.’ – Mickey Jo ([03:49])
  • Yet, Mickey Jo questions whether Make It Happen delivers a strong enough contemporary emotional takeaway.

3. Story Structure & Characterization

• Opening Scenes and Style:
  • The play opens in present-day Edinburgh with a tour group discussing a lavish painting from the RBS’s heyday, leading to a shift into a Grecian theatrical mode (Greek masks, chorus).
  • The narrative is described as lying ‘somewhere between a traditional historical James Graham play ... and a Greek tragedy in the way that it is staged’ ([05:35]).
• Central Figure – Fred Goodwin as Tragic Protagonist:
  • Grierson’s Goodwin is drawn as a modern, flawed antihero; ambitious, ruthless, rising from humble origins to become RBS head ([06:27]).
  • He resembles a Shakespearean villain, with hubris and ambition leading to a classic downfall.

4. Brian Cox’s Scene-Stealing Role

• Adam Smith – Ghostly Mentor:
  • After a meta cameo appearance as himself, Brian Cox returns as a flamboyant, campy ghost of Adam Smith, providing both comic relief and sharp philosophical critique ([08:56] onwards).
  • ‘Brian Cox is having what seems like a very fun time playing a very campy, creepy ghost.’ ([09:52])
  • Smith’s interventions are at first playful (shopping at John Lewis, scented candles) before turning serious, challenging Goodwin’s misinterpretation of capitalist ideology.

Notable Quote:

• ‘If you’d told me Brian Cox plays Campy Ghost, I’d have been even more excited ... he is hilarious in this. Brilliant performances by the two leading men, balancing each other tonally very, very well.’ – Mickey Jo ([10:26])

5. Critique: Emotional Impact and Representation

• Whose Story Gets Told?
  • Mickey Jo reflects on Scottish audience reactions during the interval, noting disappointment that the play doesn’t explicitly voice the suffering of ordinary people affected by the crisis ([12:57]).
  • While the Greek chorus provides some spectral judgment, there’s little direct representation of working-class victims.
  • ‘...the thing that I think they would always benefit from is a “something just broke” moment.’ ([14:49])
• Comparison to The Lehman Trilogy and Sondheim’s Assassins:
  • Like these works, Make It Happen focuses on the architects of crisis, but risks neglecting the broader human cost.
  • Mickey Jo argues for a moment of direct humanity from those impacted.

Notable Quote:

• ‘Similarly, this is a play about Fred Goodwin, and we don't hear the voices of the people whose lives he ruined.’ ([15:59])

6. Music, Design, and Direction

• Music Choices:
  • Pop hits from the 2000s feature throughout, but Mickey Jo finds the soundtrack less thematically coherent, wishing for a more Scottish flavor ([16:37]).
• Set Design and Visual Motifs:
  • Anna Fleishl provides a “sprawling, brutalist set” echoing the old RBS HQ and symbolizing both power and the secrets underneath ([17:36]).
  • One effective recurring visual: a globe inflating as RBS expands, creating ‘the sensation of a balloon that was at some point going to burst’ ([13:45]).
• Staging Flourishes:
  • Striking stage images include the destruction of an office-blocking tree with a wine bottle, paralleling excess; and a poignant juxtaposition of Gordon Brown with a rock, Goodwin with a banknote ([24:14]).

7. Playwright’s Signature Style

• Detail and Humanity:
  • Graham excels at detailing under-explored financial footnotes, such as the shadow banking system, and giving even culpable bankers moments of depth ([18:40]).
  • However, Mickey Jo maintains that the play is a bit too sympathetic to Goodwin and his cohorts, at the potential expense of stronger condemnation.

8. The Play's "Big Message" and Contemporary Relevance

• Value, Confidence, and Illusion:
  • The whole enterprise of banking (and the narrative itself) is likened to confidence trickery: it works only as long as belief is maintained ([25:20]).
  • The show ultimately offers a gripping exploration of hubris and the fragility of trust in the financial system, even if it doesn’t go far enough in moral critique.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On James Graham’s Playwriting:

  • ‘He has this brilliant way ... of taking a moment in history ... and bringing it into conversation with where we are now.’ – Mickey Jo ([03:49])

• On Brian Cox’s performance:

  • ‘Once he gets into that role, he is hilarious in this. It’s brilliant performances by the two leading men balancing each other tonally very, very well.’ ([10:26])
  • ‘Brian Cox is having what seems like a very fun time playing a very campy, creepy ghost.’ ([09:52])

• On the play’s limitations:

  • ‘Similarly, this is a play about Fred Goodwin and we don’t hear the voices of the people whose lives he ruined.’ ([15:59])
  • ‘The humanity extended to them and to Fred Goodwin is a little detrimental to what the audience might like to see in terms of shaming them for their mistakes.’ ([20:47])

• On the big dramatic device:

  • ‘Every time a decision is made by him that we can already tell is leading to his demise and the bank’s demise, it is punctuated by him giving the order: “make it happen.”’ ([18:59])

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Event Description | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:41 | Historical context and festival origins | | 03:49 | James Graham’s method and body of work | | 05:35 | Greek theatrical style and opening device | | 06:27 | Introduction and characterization of Fred Goodwin | | 08:56 | Brian Cox cameo and transition to Adam Smith ghost | | 09:52 | Brian Cox’s comic performance as Adam Smith | | 10:26 | The tonal balance between Grierson and Cox | | 12:57 | Audience reactions to characterization and emotional stakes | | 13:45 | Visual motif: the inflating globe | | 15:59 | Critique of narrative’s focus—missing working class voices | | 16:37 | Thoughts on music and staging | | 17:36 | Set design observations | | 18:59 | Repetition of the line "make it happen" and its significance | | 20:47 | On the play’s degree of condemnation/critique | | 22:31 | Parallel between religious interpretation and Goodwin’s idolizing | | 24:14 | Striking visual parallels in the staging | | 25:20 | The confidence trick at the heart of banking and of the play |

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Overall Tone and Closing Thoughts

Mickey Jo’s review is engaging, witty, and deeply informed by both his passion for theatre and his firsthand immersion among the Scottish audience. He admires Make It Happen for its dramaturgy, compelling performances, and inventive theatricality—particularly Brian Cox’s gleefully campy Adam Smith. Yet, he ultimately finds the piece falls just short of catharsis, wishing it had more directly engaged with the human cost of banking failure.

He predicts (and hopes) for a future life for the play and encourages listeners to share their own thoughts—especially if they saw this run in Edinburgh.

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For Further Engagement

• For more reviews or to join the theatre conversation, Mickey Jo encourages listeners to subscribe to his YouTube channel or follow the podcast ([end]).

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Transcript

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Now this is the first review that I am bringing to you here on social media in a little while because for the past week or so I have been consumed by the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and I have been reviewing some 50 shows that I saw in seven days at that festival and this one is going to be a little different. And yet not because this is still the show that I saw in Edinburgh during that week but is not part of the Festival Fringe. It is part of the Edinburgh International Festival which actually technically speaking came first. Both the festival itself and the Festival Fringe have their origins in post World War II Edinburgh with this one having been devised and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe having occurred naturally in response to it. And so rather than this being a one hour piece of theatre in a makeshift theatrical space like a lecture theater or a storage container or an inflatable cow, this was at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre and it has been co produced by the Edinburgh International Festival as well as the National Theatre, Theatre of Scotland and Dundee Rep in association with Playful Productions and Neal Street Productions. All of which seems to suggest that this sold out run during August isn't going to be the last time we see or hear this particular play. Which is exciting because I did enjoy it and I'm going to let you know exactly why in this review. If I haven't said the title yet, this is Make It Happen by James Graham and it concerns the collapse in 2008 of the Royal bank of Scotland, a hugely impactful event in the recent history of British economics, which is by many people very well and very painfully remembered, which can make theatricalizing those true events a challenge. We're going to talk about why, but before we do, if you have had the chance to see this this month at the Edinburgh International Festival, please let me know what you thought in the comments section down below. And if you want to hear more of my reviews, make sure to subscribe right here to my theater themed YouTube channel or go follow me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, let me tell you what I thought of Make It Happen. Lots to talk about in terms of the way that it was written, in the way that it was performed, in the way that it was directed, but also the way in which it was received. All interesting. Now Graham here is dramatizing events that happened around two decades ago and I love a James Graham history play. I love a James Graham State of the Nation play. If you don't know, James Graham has also written such works as this House and Quiz and Punch, set to open imminently in the West End and on Broadway, as well as the award winning Dear England and other brilliant works alongside. And the focus of many of these plays are interesting historical chapters, but not simply as a time capsule. He has this brilliant way in plays like like this House and plays like Best of Enemies, of taking a moment in history, a seemingly unimportant moment in history, and identifying not only why it was pivotal and why it would have a sizable knock on effect in the years and the decades that would follow, but also bringing it into conversation with where we are now and sort of suggesting its relevance to contemporary society and what there is for us to learn about that moment in terms of the human condition. What we can take from that only I'm not sure I fully connected to the emotional, contemporary takeaway of Make It Happen. Let me tell you a little bit more about how this play works. So we begin in modern day Edinburgh with a tour group beholding a horrifying painting. And it's at the end of a humorous conversation about this when one member of the tour notes that artwork such as this used to hang in the Royal bank of Scotland and was emblematic in the years before its downfall of the excess and the demonstrative wealth that would ultimately become synonymous with all of its issues. The Royal bank of Scotland having been an enormous casualty of the 2008 economic collapse. Of course, the real casualty was experienced not by those in power, not by those responsible for the mistakes of the bank, but by its customers. And believe me, we will get to that. But after we regard this painting, we then turn our attention to a series of Grecian theatrical masks, which are then lowered down and adopted by the ensemble, setting the tone for what kind of storytelling this is going to be. And it's somewhere between a traditional historical James Graham play that is loaded with facts and personalities and character development and an awful lot of humor. But also it is something of a Greek tragedy in the way that it is staged, in the way that it is conceived. Our central character is Fred Goodwin, the man who came to be responsible for the Royal bank of Scotland and its extraordinary growth prior to 2008 and the way in which his follies are spectated and sort of judged and shamed by a haunting Greek chorus who mostly watch on and also play roles and also sing occasionally sing. A handful of early 2000s, mostly pop songs that seemed to my mind to have no discernible explicit link to Edinburgh, to Scottish origin, or to any particular year. But you have things like Chasing Pavements and I think somewhere only we know as well, and like the Killers is in there anyway, as Greek as it all is. Fred himself is something of a Shakespearean villain, particularly of a Shakespearean history, because not unlike a lot of those kings, he comes to power as something of an outsider. And then he experiences his downfall as a direct result of his own hubris and ambition. And not for not also spends an awful lot of the play in conversation with a ghost. But we will also get to that. Now, Fred is an interesting character because he lacks a sense of obvious villainous theatricality. He refers to himself as a soulless crocodile and observes in one early flirtatious encounter with the colleague who would go on to become his adulterous mistress. That he likes to go unnoticed, that people do not see him, and that is by design. We first meet him in the play when he is brought into a meeting with the current CEO of the Royal bank of Scotland, who is looking to transition out of his role into a different one. And they discussing the background check that they had administered on Fred, which is a neat enough way to deliver us a little bit of character exposition. Now, Fred is portrayed by Sandy Grierson and he is a compellingly interesting character because he is ruthless, as we come to learn, and he is ambitious, but it's a sort of a different brand of ambition. He comes from a humble class background and he has risen to prominence in the financial world. He only rises to further prominence during the events of the play when his salary at the Royal bank of Scotland balloons to far beyond what is reasonable. And there is a kind of a passion and there is a quality of egotism, but it's a very different one, It's a very calculated one. And what's really interesting is the way in which his early intelligence and his observation is rationalized with his inability to perceive his own demise by the end of the thing. Again, very Shakespearean. All of these great men who are ultimately blind to their own imminent failure now learn an awful lot about recent history. We learn an awful lot about that period at the Royal bank of Scotland. We are also acquainted with a great deal of further Scottish history. There is talk of the Enlightenment, particularly because Fred's personal hero is the 18th century philosopher Adam Smith, who is regarded as the father of capitalism. And this is something of a spoiler alert, but we hear him quoted and talked about extensively before he is eventually invoked in the narrative and directly portrayed first by Brian Cox playing himself at a celebration event with a local sort of a theatre troupe who are laughably stereotypical and who Brian Cox the actor finds immediately fatiguing before he heads out in his sunglasses and baseball cap and does the bare minimum of reading. A little bit of dialogue for anyone who had bought a ticket on the understanding that the great screen actor Brian Cox was making his stage return to appear in this play. Amongst it's worth pointing out a bunch of other recent stage projects. This might have been a bit of a head scratching moment, but don't you worry ticket buyers, because he appears very shortly afterwards in a wildly fun capacity because he bursts magically into Fred's office as the ghost of Adam Smith. And if the notion sounds sort of Shakespearean, the execution is really more Dickensian. As he eventually goes about explaining to Fred that he has misunderstood his life's work. And there's nothing more humbling for either man to know that they have misinterpreted their hero, or for them to know that they have been misinterpreted centuries after their death. Because Adam is played by Brian, is sort of horrified by what Fred has created at the bank and all that he has acquired and how much he is earning and how little regard he has for the poorest in society. And that, you know, his teachings about the importance of capitalism weren't balanced as he wanted them to be, with an understanding of giving back, of establishing class mobility and all that stuff. And if I'm making him sound like a serious ghostly character, I promise you he isn't. Because Brian Cox is having what seems like a very fun time playing a very campy, creepy ghost. Because it actually takes the two men a very long time to enter into a legitimate conversation about Adam Smith's work and his writing. Before that, it's more about finding out what John Lewis is and smelling a scented candle. The second time that he appears as a ghost, he is wielding John Lewis shopping bags and he is delighting in all of the stuff that he can buy now. And let me tell you, I initially got very excited about this play on the basis that it was James Graham writing about history. If you'd told me Brian Cox plays Campy Ghost, I'd have been even more excited. Excited. And having seen his performance in Long Day's Journey Into Night, it's delightful to see him actually having fun on stage. And once he gets into that role, he is hilarious in this. It's brilliant performances by the two leading men balancing each other tonally very, very well. But let's return for just a moment to the way in which this play is written, what it chooses to depict, and critically what it chooses.

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[Mickey Jo (Theatre Critic)]

Not to depict. So here is the thing, and this is very possibly the major shortcoming of make it happen. During the interval of this production, I, as an English audience member in a majority Scottish audience, was eavesdropping on the conversations happening around me. Don't judge me. I considered it part of my professional responsibility as a critic. I was taking into account the opinions of nearby audience members. It was professionalism. Listen. It was taxed, deductible. And something that I heard spoken about extensively and fairly passionately was a little bit of a reservation by the halfway point of the production, because there hadn't yet been enough condemnation, there hadn't yet been sufficient shaming of Fred Goodwin and his actions and the devastation that it had wrought for so many normal people, for families and for hopeful individuals, for vulnerable individuals. There is a line at some point in an exchange that Fred has with one of his colleagues about what banking means to them. And there is some conversation about ordinary people feeling inspired to be able to achieve their dreams. What the play doesn't necessarily do is circle back to that moment and acknowledge the impact of the Royal bank of Scotland's 2008 collapse. And circa the interval, I was extending a benefit of the doubt because it seemed as though the first act was depicting this extraordinary rise. There had been some great direction with a globe that was getting bigger and bigger and bigger as the bank was expanding and this sensation of a balloon that was at some point going to burst. And I thought that we were going to see the enormous downfall in the second act. And technically speaking, we did. And we saw how the British government at the time, led by Labour leader Gordon Brown, who of course was Scottish, had to take responsibility for the crisis. And in typical James Graham fashion, we saw the depiction of all of this. We saw the events as they had played out, seen through a lens of humanity. We didn't see it the way that it would have been shown on the news. We saw into those private rooms and into those private convers conversations. We saw Fred Goodwin arriving personally at Alistair Darling's door, trying to convince him to lend them some support once they were really in dire straits. But in all of this, though there is a certain quantity of shame and though he is punished within the narrative and the narrative depicts the way in which he was punished by history and he is stripped of his knighthood, we don't see his wife finding out about the affair. But what I think we lack here, in spite of a Greek chorus representing presumably the people of Edinburgh who sort of hiss at him occasionally, as represented through one particular player in the ensemble, is the actual voice of the affected working class individuals. I think about this a lot with these sorts of stories. It's the thing that keeps me from really enjoying the Lehman Trilogy, which I think is an extraordinary piece of theatre and incredibly similar to this piece of theatre. If I had to compare this to anything, it would be the Lehman Trilogy. But likewise with that play, I think that is a depiction of the great men who shaped financial history and whose mistakes, as we head towards the new millennium, were ultimately hugely costly for many individuals more so than themselves, and yet we don't hear from those people. Similarly, this is a play about Fred Goodwin and we don't hear the voices of the people whose lives he ruined. I was hearing behind me there were people who couldn't come and see this play because they knew people who had been too badly affected or they themselves have been too badly affected, and they just couldn't bring themselves to do it. And you don't get that same sense of weight and of shame on stage as I was hearing around me in the audience. And that, I think, is the biggest shortcoming of this particular story. The thing that I think they would always benefit from is a something just broke moment. What I mean by that is the song that was added to Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins after early versions of the show in which the voices of the people reflecting on presidential assassinations were added into a late moment in the show to inject some pathos and some humanity, but also bring it into conversation with the audience. And there's also an entire story following this story about what would go on to happen, what this would all give rise to in British austerity and division and anger and populism. Ultimately, I'm not sure that James Graham adequately grapples with the consequences of this particular chapter. I also, for what it's worth, I'm not entirely convinced by all of the different uses of music. I love what music can offer into a play, but I would love for the song choices to feel a little more purposeful. If I am missing something about the world that brings together all of the songs I mentioned, as well as like Leona Lewis's Bleeding Love, Please educate me in the comments. But there are more than enough musical artists and bands to have come out of, like Edinburgh specifically that I feel like it could have been A Scottish back catalog, because that actually is one of the very interesting things about this story. Prior to its collapse, the Royal bank of Scotland had, under Fred Goodwin, become the largest bank in the world. It had expanded enormously. And what James Graham does by bringing him into direct conversation with. With his dead hero, Adam Smith, is to reconcile that particular era of Scottish success with the Scottish Enlightenment and the founding of capitalism, which also, you know, was born in Scotland. Now, I want to circle back to some other notes on the brilliance of this play, on the way that it is staged, the way that it is written. I really enjoy the design by Anna Fleishl. It's this sprawling, brutalist set design, which I think is meant to be familiar of the older Royal bank of Scotland headquarters. But I'm not a. I'm not an architectural expert. It, in any case, inevitably conveys a sense of industry and of weight and of history. And there's a false quality to it as well, I think, because brutalism as an aesthetic speaks to something sturdy. But there are secrets lying beneath that. In one of the play's more interesting notes, James Graham introduces us to an entire subplot about the shadow banking system that was used to hide bad assets. This having been a huge component of the 2008 collapse. It's classic James Graham to detail a footnote such as this. And this is presented to us as one of the great mistakes made by Fred Goodwin and his team. And interestingly, every time a decision is made by him that we can already tell is leading to his demise and the bank's demise, it is punctuated by him giving the order, make it happen. This is something that he does. After the bank has gained real momentum in acquiring more assets, firing other banks. Something is petitioned to him and he replies, make it happen. Or he asks for something to be done, and someone explains to him why it can't be, and he insists, make it happen. It becomes clearer and clearer to us that these decisions are not always beneficial. He demands the destruction of this ancient tree that is blocking the view from his office in this lavish, newly constructed headquarters. And when he is finally forced to confront his own reckoning, what he has to say for himself is that he made something happen. Happen. Now, the production has been directed by Andrew Panton, who certainly seems to have a great understanding of James Graham's sense of humor. The characterization of a handful of supporting characters like Gordon Brown and the other members of his Cabinet are not as satirical as they were in the likes of Dear England. They're also not quite as serious as they were in this house. They fall somewhere between the two. And a lot of the other banking characters, the culpable bankers at the Royal bank of Scotland are afforded a tremendous humanity by James Graham. This is something that he does very well, is to search back through history and find everyone's humanity and offer that as a point of understanding and connection. And it's their reckless ambition which is depicted more so here than anything else. And it's sort of depicted in lieu of offering criticism. I do think that the narrative could be a little more heavy handed in really criticizing their actions. And a part of me does feel as though the humanity extended to them and to Fred Goodwin is a little detrimental to what the audience might like to see in terms of. Of shaming them for their mistakes. Even as the entire world is catching fire, financially speaking, Fred is offered the opportunity to exercise his own humanity. If he isn't judged by the narrative, though, he is certainly judged by the ghost of his own hero, Adam Smith. Now, his relationship with Smith is interesting because we have heard him quote him constantly. He acquires one of his books for his office in a first edition. But when he actually meets him, when the two of them are brought into this magical conversation, we come to understand that the way that he has interpreted Adam Smith's writing, writing is sort of biblical, not only in terms of the reverence that he has for it and for him, but also in the way that he is actually reading it. Because he quotes these out of context, individual ideas and paragraphs as though they are religious biblical verses with Adam Smith informing him that he has missed the bigger ideas of compassion and benevolence, like a deity whose teachings have been misrepresented and misinterpreted. It's as though he is appearing to Fred like God in order to clarify what it was that he actually meant in order to offer some nuance. And though he is Adam Smith, he, as far as Fred is concerned, may as well be Adam of the Garden of Eden, the first economist and therefore the first man to have lived and to have mattered. When Smith finally says, how many times did I mention wellness and sympathy and equality? It's familiar of that quote about the number of times that love is said in the Bible. Bible in.

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[Mickey Jo (Theatre Critic)]

Trust to hate and the whole thing, I should say, is a really compelling and engaging watch for, for a majority of the audience, it is a recap of events that they already understand and remember. For those like me, who would have been 13 years old when all of this was unfolding and you know, who remembers hearing it on the radio, it's a chance to be acquainted in slightly more depth with what was actually going on and the personalities behind all of this. And there's a tremendous sense of adrenaline as we eventually begin to hurtle towards the collapse that we all know is coming. It's like a film about a car crash. You're waiting for the race wreck, which provides a sort of a seriousness and a weight of its own, allowing James Graham to sort of dance around the historical points leading up to it and inject his own trademark wit and satire. Certainly I think the arrival of Brian Cox as a campy ghost is the thing that really upskills this from a straightforward theatrical retelling to something with a little bit more to say about the circumstances. But it also is something of a double edged sword because it does simultaneously frame the whole thing as a kind of Macbeth esque story story for Fred, making him the clear protagonist, making it less the Royal bank of Scotland play and more the Fred Goodwin play, which is difficult enough to do because also he's still alive. Finally, if I haven't said it enough, there are some fantastic moments of direction. There is the felling of a tree with a wine bottle. That is such a great visual that is so representative of the culture that had arisen at the Royal bank of Scotland and the depiction of, of excess and of greed. There's a moment in which we see simultaneously Prime Minister Gordon Brown holding this centuries old piece of rock, acknowledging the earth, while in the background, Fred Goodwin holds up a banknote. This thing that he reveres more than anything else in the world, the idea of money. There's also, I meant to say this earlier, and it's only just now coming back to me a great parallel between Fred Goodwin's entire ideology and his entire personality and his secret to success and the way that banking works and the way that Cher's work and the reason for the collapse of it all ultimately in 2008. Because what he's doing is projecting confidence and projecting the existence of something that people only need to perceive. It doesn't need to really exist. He is manifesting it into existence, which is also true of shares and of value and of assets which are said to be there and are said to exist but don't. If every bank customer simultaneously wanted to withdraw them, that, as it turns out, is something that is going to break the world. I thought that this was a fascinating play, quintessential James Graham, which makes it engaging and entertaining and watchable. It doesn't necessarily take on the voice of condemnation that all audience members may have been hoping for, but it is fascinating and gripping and naturally theatrical nonetheless, and I remain pretty convinced that it's going to go on to have a future life. Keep your eyes out for the chance to see Make It Happen at a theatre near you and thank you so much for listening to this review. I hope that you have enjoyed my attempts to cobble together from 15 sparse pages of notes a coherent response to this play. If you have seen Make It Happen at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, let us all know what you thought of it in the comments section down below. And if you enjoyed listening to my review, then please subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on notifications so that YouTube lets you know every time I share a new video. Whether it's a review, a theatre going vlog, or a theatrical news update. Or if you would prefer, go follow me on podcast platforms. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theater. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.

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[Mickey Jo (Theatre Critic)]

Wait. Let's negotiate.

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[Mickey Jo (Theatre Critic)]

Take it or leave it.

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[Mickey Jo (Theatre Critic)]

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