12 hours ago
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There have been some high-profile dramas about the fiscal greed and corruption that preceded or precipitated the 2008 financial crisis, from The Lehman Trilogy to Enron. James Graham’s musical, premiering at the Edinburgh international festival, is at least as epic, even if it bites off more than it can possibly chew.
It takes us back to the real-life drama of the Royal Bank of Scotland and the government bailout after its collapse. Fred Goodwin was CEO and the bank had such a meteoric rise under his tenure that it claimed to be the largest in the world.
Graham works hard to make the banking part of the story snappy – and succeeds. Directed by Andrew Panton, it is pacey even if long, serious but funny, all set to song and kinetic projections across towers on Anna Fleischle’s set which might be inflated columns of the share index.
There is musical comedy even as the singing chorus presides over Goodwin’s fall; darker satire as banking culture is captured, complete with after-hours karaoke nights (Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out, Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head etc).
This is a moment in economic history when bankers such as Goodwin (Sandy Grierson) become emperors, trumping the power of parliament, so it seems. Grierson plays a fascinatingly bland tyrant, looking every bit the accountant he is by training. But like his office lover, Rita (Hannah Donaldson), says, he is a lion lying in the grass. When he reveals himself as such, he is ruthless indeed: a white-collar Scarface, high on power.
Graham gives Goodwin’s tale the ancient Greek treatment at times, with ghosts, hallucinatory hissing characters and the emergence of what seems like an underworld beneath the cracked reality of banking life. From this, amid rumbles and puffs of smoke, Brian Cox emerges as the spectre of moral philosopher and founder of free market economics, Adam Smith.
He is entertaining rather than fearful and seems knowingly to be Brian Cox the actor playing Smith the character. In between discussions on Smith’s “invisible hand” the tone flips back into a comical vein. Smith admires Goodwin’s scented candles and develops a penchant for John Lewis. There is a satirical diversion into A Christmas Carol territory, with a snowy night-time trip across Edinburgh, that serves no greater purpose. It is entertaining nonetheless, and Cox amuses as Smith.
Some of the antithetical elements do clash and dilute meaning. Is this a play about hubris, you wonder, or a satire of it – or is it attempting to grapple with the nature of capitalism itself rather than just Goodwin’s legacy? Its scope is so broad, its characterisation broad-brush too and there is not enough drama to Goodwin’s actual downfall. Some balls are dropped, such as Goodwin and Rita’s relationship – its trajectory all but abandoned after one comical sex scene. Yet Graham’s marshalling of material is impressive overall, and it is a miracle that the flips from comedy to Gothicism and back do not jar.
Graham has, as always, done his homework on the subject, meticulously so. Co-produced by Dundee Rep theatre, and set in Edinburgh, there is knowing local humour (Leith is labelled an underworld, New Town is heaven, for example). Scottish statesmen stand at the centre of No 10 politics: Alistair Darling (Sandy Batchelor) is amusingly drawn. Gordon Brown (Andy Clark) becomes something of an ethical touchstone, the hero of the piece here even though, as Goodwin points out, it was Brown who gave him the freedom to take RBS down the disastrous road that he did. Everyone is flatly drawn, though that does not impede the enjoyment.
There are explanations of Adam Smith’s philosophies, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and capitalism itself, but the fourth wall is never pierced. Characters often face the audience while delivering a mini treatise, and it is miraculous too that this does not seem like heavy-handed exposition.
It becomes clear that Goodwin follows the word of Smith’s ideas but not the spirit. This is what leads him to his amoral drive towards acquisition. We hear how he only read one of Smith’s books – not the one that spoke of the ethics of the free market. It is a funny turn in the narrative, but too flip to be convincing.
Goodwin’s fall never really comes either, dramatically. He stares out at the audience defiantly, even as the lights go down. There is no remorse, no learning. It’s chilling but also anti-climatic.
Yet still sparky and exuberant as Graham’s plays always are, with heaps of knowledge, humour and sharp lines. It sprawls, turns eccentric corners and defies expectations. Its ambition, and epic scope, is simultaneously a strength and weakness.
English (US)