Rebus takes to the stage with a new actor playing Ian Rankin's iconic detective

Gray O'Brien plays Rebus in Ian Rankin's play Rebus: A Game Called Malice at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh. Pic: Lisa Ferguson

Much loved Edinburgh detective John Rebus is having a busy year. Hot on the heels of the acclaimed TV show, he’s now on stage in a play written specially by his creator Ian Rankin, starring actor Gray O’Brien.

A murder mystery, A Game Called Malice opens at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh then tours to Aberdeen and Glasgow this month with the 56-year-old actor the latest in a line to take up the role.

This time round Rebus finds himself out of his comfort zone as a plus one at a posh dinner party in the city’s Heriot Row where the hostess decides a whodunnit would be a fun way to keep her guests entertained. When a body is found on the bathroom floor, Rebus’s instincts kick in.

A Game Called Malice will be performed in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow in September. Pic: Contributed

Directed by Loveday Ingram, alongside O’Brien as Rebus), the play from the multimillion-copy award-winning bestseller of over thirty novels worldwide and the creator of John Rebus and Simon Reade, is a six-hander also starring Abigail Thaw and Billy Hartman.

Best known for his TV roles in crime drama The Loch, Coronation Street, Peak Practice and Casualty and films The Wasting and The Daniel Connection, 56-year old O’Brien also has multiple theatre credits, including Educating Rita (Perth Theatre), Catch Me If You Can, The Case of the Frightened Lady, The Sound of Music, Dead Simple (UK tour), Sleuth (Apollo Theatre).

He’s upbeat about taking on the role of Rebus as he joins me from rehearsals to give us a hint of what’s in store for the legions of Rankin fans hot on the trail of tickets.

“I think Edinburgh is really looking forward to seeing this play because it’s a homecoming for local man Ian Rankin. And this is a new piece, a new story, not a stage version of one of his books.

Stage and screen star Gray O'Brien is the latest to make the role of detective John Rebus his own. Pic: Lisa Ferguson

“It’s a six-hander, six actors, and Rebus is invited along to a dinner party in the New Town at Heriot Row, so it’s set in the dining room of a very grand house and he’s a plus one, that’s where it all starts.”

The play taps into the duality of Edinburgh, its Jekyll and Hyde, fur coat and nae knickers, light and dark aspects and the secrets and what lies the facade, which is why a character like Rebus is ideal.

“He’s an interesting character, a Fifer that’s moved into Edinburgh and had his training there, but an outsider,” says O’Brien who hails from Glasgow where he trained at the then RSAMD.

In the play Rebus takes the audience along for the ride, attempting to solve the clues as it goes along. There’s nothing we love more than a murder mystery.

A Game Called Malice, starring Gray O'Brien, is a six-hander whodunnit that takes place at a dinner party in Edinburgh's New Town. Pic: Lisa Ferguson

“There are times where we know the audience is going to say, ‘oh, what’s happened there? Was that significant?’ And that’s our job, to tell that story, so it’s great fun.

“There really is a puzzle to work out and at the interval I’m sure people will be saying ‘do you think it’s her? Do you think it’s him? What does that mean? What was that?’ We’ve got all that. That happens throughout the play, people trying to dissect the text and sometimes people will say ‘shhhh, just watch it!’ But that’s all part of it.

“And it’s a good piece of writing. There’s lots to the script. It really is multi-layered and there’s just so much nuance in it and that’s what we’re all trying to find as actors.

“What we all love about this play is how Ian Rankin’s hit so many current concerns - he talks online gambling, Twitter and Instagram, cyber bullying and some of the sexual abuse that happens online - there’s just so much in it. And we do have a younger member of the company who keeps us all up to date with all this new stuff,” he laughs.

Gray O'Brien on Edinburgh's Calton Hill. Pic: Lisa Ferguson.

From what we know of Rebus, he needs someone to bring him up to date with ‘this new stuff’.

“Oh Rebus, he just doesn’t understand Instagrammers at all actually; he’s a bit of a dinosaur in that respect. We’re in 2024 and John Rebus is retired, ‘replaced by box ticking and gender awareness courses’, as he puts it.”

But what Rebus does understand is murder and crime, making him the ideal guest at a dinner party whodunnit.

“The play is all about reading the room and that’s what Rebus does. He watches body language. I didn’t realise how much of a police thing that is and Rankin has obviously spent so much time with police and his research is meticulous. So every word he’s written we hang on, because we want to do service to why he’s chosen those words.

“And it’s interesting when he comes in to see us working in rehearsals. You ask him about a line and he says ‘what do you think? I’ve written it but what do you think?’ because that’s what he does - he writes it and then he hands it over but we want him to approve what we’ve done.”

Rebus has been played by several actors over the years, on TV and radio, most recently by Richard Rankin in the TV series version and each actor has his own take.

“I’ve watched the TV programmes and of course everyone's talking about the new TV version because they’ve taken a different look at it and he’s obviously much younger but this is an older Rebus,” says O’Brien.

But a play is different from TV and allows him to explore his own version of the legendary detective, something Rankin has given him the nod to do.

“Ian Rankin says it’s a generic character and it doesn’t matter how he sounds or how he looks, he is an everyman, Rebus, but a certain kind of everyman. He is a guy that does it that way and that’s the way he does it.

“I think what it is about him is that he’s not very stylish. I had a discussion with the designer and we said he’s just not very good at these sort of dress up dinner party type things. He feels a bit awkward and he’s probably got one suit that he wears for births, deaths and marriages, like a lot of people. He just doesn’t wear it very well, shall we say.”

You say Rebus is moody and you like that as you’re good at playing moody and also have experience playing detectives.

“Yes, I think it’s much more interesting, and I have played other detectives. I was Roy Grace on stage in an adaptation of Peter James’s Dead Simple. This one’s different because Ian wrote this specifically for the stage, that was the prime goal. He said he felt he didn’t really know what he was doing, but I think he knew exactly what he was doing and it’s a very good bit of stage writing, very cleverly done.”

You also played Detective Inspector Brian Farrow in the feature film, The Daniel Connection (2015).

“That was a little bit weird, working on green screen and set sort of in the future - I didn’t fully understand it to be honest,“ he laughs.

“I’ve also done an Edwardian thriller called The Case of the Frightened Lady, and played quite a stuffy detective in that, and a Broadway Comedy, Catch me If You Can (2022), with Patrick Duffy, and was a New York cop in that one, a completely different character again. So yes I’ve played lots of those and I’ve also played a detective in Taggart which a lot of people forget. I did the last five films with Mark McManus as DC Rob Gibson (1993–1995) so that was the same genre, but a different style. Detectives are very interesting characters to play.”

“So it’s an interesting genre which I’ve visited many times but this is new for me because it’s modern and also, kind of dangerous for an actor because you’re stepping in and people are always going to compare you with other versions of Rebus. But I was impressed that it was Ian who wrote the thing and I think you can very much tell that Ian has written it, the depth of the character, even the way that he describes things when you’re doing an exposition on stage, he writes it a certain way that you have to try and find those rhythms of Rebus and that’s been interesting and challenging.”

“I think it’s going to be great at the Festival Theatre just because it’s a homecoming for Ian Rankin and it’s selling really well, so make sure you all go and get your tickets because it is selling well in Edinburgh.”

The indications so far are that A Game Called Malice will be a sell out.

“That’d be really sweet if that happens, says O’Brien. Ian Rankin’s Rebus, that’s what sells it. So there will be a lot of Rankin fans that are going to be watching this and I’m hoping that we’ll bring in crime novel aficionados who don’t usually come to the theatre. Because we have a responsibility to bring theatre to people who normally wouldn’t go - they might go and see a panto, but we might be introducing people to what might be their first play, and if this is part of the audience’s first experience watching a live play then that’s a wonderful thing. It’s not like watching a TV show where you can just pause it or watch 20 minutes on the train then come back to it next week - you’re sitting in that theatre and hooked for two hours.”

Has he ever been to a dinner party in a grand house in Edinburgh’s New Town?

“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a dinner party in Edinburgh,” he says. He has however, been on stage in Edinburgh, dating right back to 1990 when his first job was a Fringe performance of Treasure Island at The Assembly Hall on the Mound alongside the likes of theatrical luminaries David Harewood, Hywel Bennett, Walter Carr and Jimmy Logan. “It was a great first job. I was playing a valet and we were all doubling up as pirates and it was a bit of a swashbuckle. All the ropes were dropped from that grand roof at the Assembly Hal and we were climbing up and down the rigging and it’s great fun when you’re a young guy, 21, and you’re just embarking on a career. And here I am at 56 talking about it, about to go back on stage in Edinburgh.”.

O’Brien has done a lot of both stage and screen in his career but which does he like best?

“I do like a bit of both. I like the versatility. And we all come from the same place, which is always just playing the truth. I think The Loch maybe was the last TV show that I did, a six-part thriller, beautiful scenery shot on Loch Ness and around Glen Coe village. I got to sail a boat, racing up and down Loch Ness, I mean when do you get the chance to do that? It was such a lovely thing and I’d just lost my mum and was in a bit of a state and I definitely felt she was with me when we shot that show. Probably saying ‘slow doon!’

“I think there was a run of 13 years straight that I went from one telly long runner to another long runner and I’d like to do more after this. But I like the throw-awayness of theatre, because TV can’t be changed, it’s printed and that’s it, whereas with theatre every single time you say that line you can nuance it in a way that changes the sense and sometimes the reaction of the person you’re saying that line to, so it’s very exciting, it’s very dangerous. There’s a jeopardy involved in live theatre which I love. You never know what’s going to happen.

“When I was doing doing Twelve Angry Men on stage last year I was on a revolving platform that stopped one night and we had to pull down the curtain and stop the show, have a little discussion with the audience, solve it, then continue, and that’s what happens in theatre. It’s exciting, it’s scary, the scariest thing in the world. I don’t think I’ve ever had an opening night when I didn’t feel sick with nerves. You wonder why you’re still doing it 34 years on, but we do it because when it’s up and running it’s the best drug, the best hit, the best high you’ll ever get.”

Gray O’Brien stars in Rebus: A Game Called Malice by Ian Rankin and Simon Reade at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 10–14 September, ( 0131 529 6000, www.capitaltheatres.com), His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 16–21 September (01224 641122, www.aberdeenperformingarts.com, Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, 23–27 September (0141 332 1846, trafalgartickets.com/pavilion-theatre-glasgow/en-GB)