The Stage

Actor Cox to make Scottish theatre return

Published Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 17:10 by Matthew Hemley

Acclaimed classical and film actor Brian Cox is poised to make a return to Scottish theatre and is in talks to star in a major reworking of Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman.

The actor, who began his theatre career in Scotland working for companies such as Dundee Rep and the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh, made his last UK theatre appearance in the 2006 Royal Court and West End productions of Rock’n’Roll by Tom Stoppard. He told The Stage he was in discussions with the National Theatre of Scotland about starring in a production towards the end of the year or early in 2010.

Cox said the venue’s management had invited him to suggest a play in which he would like to appear and added he had told them he would like to perform in a “modern version” of John Gabriel Borkman.

He said the play was relevant to today’s audiences because of its portrayal of a ruined banker, which he said was reminiscent of the story of US financier Bernard Madoff, who recently pleaded guilty to 11 charges relating to an estimated $50 billion (£35 billion) fraud.

“I think John Gabriel Borkman is like Madoff living up in his flat, having whooped everybody of their money. It seems to be a story of our time and I think it’s a curiously prophetic piece. The National Theatre of Scotland asked me what I would be interested in and I told them that’s what I would be interested in,” he said.

Cox, who has won Olivier awards for his work in Rat in the Skull and Titus Andronicus, has spent the last couple of years working in the US, having appeared in the Broadway transfer of Stoppard’s Rock’n’Roll and a production of Yasmina Reza’s Art earlier this year.

If a National Theatre of Scotland production of John Gabriel Borkman gets the green light, Cox said he would like Scottish writer John Byrne to rework the play.

The writer, who is the partner of actress Tilda Swinton, was behind a version of Uncle Vanya, called Uncle Varick, in which Cox starred in Scotland in 2004.

Cox also said the work currently being produced out of his home country had “stolen a march” on theatre produced elsewhere and added: “I am very proud of what’s happening in Scotland. I think we are well ahead of the game. We have broken the shackles of the English feudal culture. We are not bound by Shakespeare, we are not bound by all of that stuff and we’re free. And it shows in work from the likes of Gregory Burke. His work - Black Watch - is really, really something.”