Playwright James Graham has built a career by dramatising real people and events – not to obscure the truth, but to interrogate it. For Graham, theatre is a space to probe, provoke and revisit the past with curiosity.  

That instinct led him to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis – a chapter of recent history rarely explored from a Scottish point of view. 

Make It Happen shifts the lens, anchoring the story in Edinburgh and pairing two towering Scottish figures: the economist Adam Smith and the banker Fred Goodwin. Smith, played by Brian Cox, haunts Goodwin as a kind of Enlightenment-era conscience. 

Dive deeper into Make It Happen as James Graham explores how theatre can help us investigate the truth behind real-life socio-political events.