After 65 years as an actor, Brian Cox has no shortage of thespian wisdom to impart. But the Scotsman likes synthesizing his advice to a particular principle: Heed the Bard.
He reveres Act 3, Scene 2 of “Hamlet,” to be specific. When the Danish prince addresses a troupe of actors, he encourages them to speak “trippingly on the tongue” and “to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”
The performers need to achieve authenticity, in other words. Strive for honesty. Avoid overacting. Reflect the world.
“Hamlet’s advice to the players has all the advice that an actor needs of how to behave with an audience,” Cox says. “That’s what we do: We have to tell the truth.”
That mantra steered Cox back to the role of Johann Sebastian Bach in “The Score,” the fact-based play onstage at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Hall through Oct. 25. Just consider the production’s tagline: “How does art survive when despots rule?”
Oliver Cotton’s weighty but deftly comic play depicts the German composer’s 1747 visit to the court of Frederick II, when the Prussian king challenged the aging maestro to improvise a byzantine musical fugue. Although “The Score” explains the origins of Bach’s masterwork “The Musical Offering,” the play is more interested in thorny conversations about artists’ roles in political conversations, the plight of military occupation and how creativity can unlock even the cruelest of minds.
After inhabiting the character twice in England — for the 2023 world premiere at the Theatre Royal Bath and for a West End run last year — the 80-year-old “Succession” actor saw the modern parallels persist. Presented with the opportunity for an encore in Washington, of all places, Cox couldn’t resist.
As he puts it, “This play is more apt now than it was when we first did it.” Even events that unfolded after “The Score” began performances earlier this month — the dismissal of Macklemore from Ed Sheeran’s tour for making pro-Palestine comments, or President Donald Trump’s threats to demolish the Kennedy Center — have underscored its resonance.
“As you see the world go to hell in a nutshell, you begin to realize that human beings are so deeply stupid about many things,” Cox says. “They’re inspired. They can be incredible. But they can also be deeply stupid. And we live in a time of gross stupidity — but dangerous stupidity. What’s happening in Gaza, what’s happening in Ukraine, what’s happening in the world at the moment — it’s just pretty horrific. We’ve allowed it to take us over, and we haven’t stood up in a way.”
But Bach does in “The Score.” Cox delivers a towering performance as the composer, alternately imagined as an irritable cynic and an endearing glad-hander in his final years. After flashing his physical humor and sly comic timing, Cox’s Bach calmly confronts Frederick about the horrors unleashed by the monarch’s warmongering ways. And Cox can feel D.C. theatergoers relishing all of the above.
“English audiences in Bath or in London never responded to the play the way these people have responded to the play, and it’s very gratifying — extremely gratifying,” he says. “I’ve never quite experienced audiences like this. I’ve never experienced audiences who are so desperate for some kind of valuation of their lives and who they are in this pretty horrible time that we’re living in.”
The production marks the end of a busy stretch for Cox. He spent his summer shooting Season 2 of “Dexter: Resurrection,” in which he plays a retired serial killer known as the New York Ripper. Earlier this year, he was on the promotional circuit for “Glenrothan,” the Scottish dramedy film he directed and starred in. Last year, he followed his West End run in “The Score” by playing economist Adam Smith in a Scottish tour of the new play “Make it Happen.” As Cox enters his eighth decade, he remains as adaptable as ever.
“He can be wonderfully funny, and he can really deliver tragically,” says Trevor Nunn, the English theater stalwart who directed each production of “The Score.” “He can deliver onstage. He can deliver on television. He can deliver in the movies. I mean, it is sheer range.”
Cox can also spin a yarn with the best of them on this mid-September afternoon at Harman Hall. He giddily recalls sneaking into double features as a child growing up in Dundee, Scotland. He’s equally animated while recounting the time he caught stage icon Nicol Williamson on the verge of fisticuffs at the Dundee Repertory Theatre. He fondly remembers how he met his wife, actress Nicole Ansari-Cox, in Hamburg while he was touring with “King Lear” and “Richard III” in 1990.
So why does Cox seem to carry a gruff reputation? Perhaps he played foulmouthed “Succession” patriarch Logan Roy a little too well. Maybe past candid comments about certain co-stars gave people the wrong impression. But sit down with him and you’ll discover a warm raconteur with, yes, a proclivity for blunt honesty.
“He’s sharp as a tack and willing to engage, and not necessarily be the nice guy in a conversation — which is important because I need to be told truths,” says “Dexter” showrunner Clyde Phillips. “If a line isn’t working, or if somebody has an idea for a better line, we’re going to go for it. Whoever touches it makes it better.”
For all of Cox’s onstage prowess — he’s amassed dozens of credits spanning stages from Dundee to Broadway to Los Angeles — he grew up a Spencer Tracy-idolizing cinephile with his sights set firmly on the silver screen. But after he landed a backstage job at the Dundee Rep as a teenager, his acting career began with bit parts onstage.
William B. Davis, the theater’s artistic director (who’d later play the Smoking Man in “The X-Files”), recognized Cox’s budding talent and helped steer him toward the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. At that point, it was a done deal: Cox was a theater creature.
“Everything sort of unfolded in the way it does, in a way that your destiny just takes over,” Cox says. “There’s nothing to do about it — it is what it’s meant to be. That’s the journey you’re meant to go on.”
Cox, of course, eventually became a prolific character actor on-screen. Scroll through his filmography and you’ll find a distinct lack of prejudice for genre, budget or any other qualifier. You’re just as likely to stumble upon Cox in a box office behemoth (“Braveheart,” “X2,” “Troy,” “The Bourne Identity”) as a cult classic (“Rushmore,” “Super Troopers,” “The Ring”) or a critical darling (“Adaptation,” “25th Hour,” “Zodiac”).
He’s also been omnipresent on television. Before winning a Golden Globe for his “Succession” role, he snagged an Emmy for the 2000 miniseries “Nuremberg.” If nothing else, you’ll recognize Cox’s voice if you’ve caught a McDonald’s commercial in the past six years.
All the while, Cox has never strayed far from the stage. His myriad London credits include “As You Like It,” “Julius Caesar” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” On Broadway, he has starred in “Strange Interlude,” “Art” and “The Great Society.” As his screen career thrived, so did his theatrical craft.
“Brian is wonderful at communicating the inner story,” says Nunn, who first worked with Cox on the West End and Broadway productions of Tom Stoppard’s “Rock ‘n Roll” two decades ago. “He can say something, but at the back of his mind — and you can just see it in his eyes — something else is being communicated. I mean, Brian has developed all of that because of the film and television career.”
Cox actually played Bach before “The Score,” in the 1984 television film “The Cantor of St. Thomas’s” — not that the experience left him craving a reprisal. “It was the most boring part I’ve ever played because I never really understood where it was coming from,” he recalls. “I was younger, and I didn’t get the fact of the incredible moral responsibility he feels.”
Nowadays, Cox connects deeply to Bach, or at least the world-weary version of the man in “The Score.” Disillusioned by Frederick’s military aggression and the appalling acts committed by his troops, Bach can’t resist voicing his objections when face-to-face with the charismatic tyrant. And it’s not hard to imagine Cox — ever outspoken about the injustices he sees in the world — doing the same in that scenario.
Take his views on Israel’s war in Gaza, for example. “You can’t believe that these people who went through the most horrific situation in the ’30s could almost behave in slightly the same way,” he says. “I find that truly shocking. I’m 80 now, and I look around and I say, ‘Are we actually learning anything? Why doesn’t it transform us? Why do we go down a path?’ And basically, it’s stupidity, it’s narcissism and it’s all kinds of stuff that has put us in this dilemma.
“Also, we have to be careful in the future about who we vote for, and what we want the world to be. But, of course, it serves the play brilliantly.”
D.C. audiences have Ansari-Cox, who plays Bach’s wife in “The Score,” to thank for orchestrating this iteration of the play: She met Shakespeare Theatre Artistic Director Simon Godwin in 2024 at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado and later approached him about staging the U.S. premiere. A potential Broadway transfer had fallen through, but Ansari-Cox was confident the play would strike a chord stateside. She also relished the idea of subverting American audiences’ impressions of her husband from his callous “Succession” character.
“He is, as Bach, just so deeply human and touching,” Ansari-Cox says. “He’s a good man that stands up for what is right — kind of the opposite of Logan Roy.”
For all of “The Score’s” gravity, playing Bach still represents something of a balm in the wake of Cox’s savage “Dexter” shoot. Having terrorized New York for decades, the Ripper is out of the serial killer game when Season 2 starts, so the giggly sadist spends his days calling and taunting his victims’ families instead.
“The part was probably the most horrible human being I’ve ever played,” Cox says. “You’re always looking for some redeeming element in the guy, and you realize he had none. So it was a bloody hard part to play.”
If Cox had trouble cracking the character, Phillips couldn’t tell. “It’s just chilling and haunting, and he just owns that role so well,” the “Dexter” showrunner says. “He absorbed that character into his being, and that’s really remarkable and really rare.”
By the time “Dexter: Resurrection” returns Oct. 30 on Paramount+, Cox will have concluded his run in “The Score” and embarked on a long-awaited hiatus. So Cox figures he’ll hit the gym and watch his fair share of Turner Classic Movies. When the next can’t-miss offer rolls around — and it surely won’t be long — he’ll be ready to compose his eclectic career’s next refrain.
“I’ve been working very hard, and I really do need a break,” he says. “This is a great moment to end a sequence that I think I’ve been involved with for the last couple of years, and I think it will come to a natural end when we finish here. I really don’t want to do anything for a while — until somebody comes along that I really like.”
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