Writer James Graham welcomes ‘beast of an actor’ to latest play

Award-winning playwright and screenwriter James Graham has spoken of his delight that actor Brian Cox will star in his latest play.

Make It Happen, which charts the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland, premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival in July.

Cox will play the ghost of Scottish economist Adam Smith.

Graham, who lives in Pulborough, West Sussex, has previously had hits with Dear England and the stage version of Boys from the Blackstuff, which opens in Brighton on Tuesday.

Graham said of Brian Cox: “He is a beast of an actor. I have admired him for years and years.

“People know him from television but he’s a theatre actor at heart.

“You feel so presumptuous and at times you pinch yourself – the 11-year-old boy who was making up stories in his room gets to work with these Hollywood actors, these legends.

“You feel incredibly lucky.”

Produced by the National Theatre of Scotland, the play will preview in Cox’s home town Dundee before moving on to Edinburgh.

The playwright said his passion for writing was fuelled by his mother who bought him a typewriter at the age of just six.

He said: “I loved writing stories and I was very lucky that my mother – rather than rolling her eyes and saying ‘get a proper job’, really encouraged me from a young age.”

Dear England, the story of Gareth Southgate and his England football redemption, picked up the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2024.

It is set to go on tour from September, as well as becoming a BBC television series with Joseph Fiennes reprising his role as the former England manager.

Meanwhile his adaptation of the 1980s television series Boys from the Blackstuff opens at the Brighton Theatre Royal on Tuesday.

“To work with Alan Bleasdale- someone I grew up watching on the sofa with my mum when I was eight or nine – to actually spend time in a room with him building this for the stage was one of the honours of my life to be honest,” he said.

Graham said that living in Sussex helped to provide a peaceful base for his writing.

“I need the peace and quiet to be able to write and to hear my own thoughts and from the first time I arrived in West Sussex I just could not believe it – the beauty of it,” he said.

“I got taken there by friends and just fell in love with it and just knew it was going to be a really inspiring place to live and work.”