If you knew Adam, like I know Adam

You could write a play about how he was, Oh, oh, oh what a guy;

Vanessa Oltra’s Adam Smith, le Grand Tour is a model of contemporary theatre with a historical focus. Oltra, who also stars, is a professor of economics at the University Montesquieu, Bordeaux and brings academic rigour to an energetic and insightful investigation of the meaning of Adam Smith in the twenty-first century. Staged as part investigative journey, part personal letter to the theorist, the result is a bombastic but deeply emotional inquiry not only into Smith’s work but the limitations of our ability to capture and interpret the past. The play began life when, in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, the author was interrupted during a lecture on economics by a student who questioned the author’s right to lecture on free-market capitalism and her knowledge of Smith, asking “And this Adam Smith, do you at least know him?” 

Running through August 26th at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.