OSCAR-NOMINATED writer William Nicholson counts such diverse screenplays as Ridley Scott’s action movie Gladiator and Shadowlands, the emotional story about CS Lewis, among his credits.

Now comes his latest stage play, Crash, which was born out of anger. He was in Oslo for a performance of one of his plays when he saw a headline about how bankers were furious at being blamed for the world financial crisis.

“I was so gobsmacked they thought that they were the victims,” he recalls. “I had all this anger in me – which is good for drama. I thought, why don’t I get going and write a quick play and see whether anyone wants it.

“But once you start writing the play it turns into something that’s more about characters.

“I wrote the first draft not long after the crash in the spring of last year and honestly thought it would be out of date by now, but the whole issue of banks continues.”

Opening the play in the week that the Government announced its wide-ranging spending review can only add to its impact.

Crash features four characters in a piece addressing the ethical questions around the credit crunch, bankers’ bonuses and society’s unhealthy obsession with wealth.

One is Nick, a securities trader who has it all. Another is an old friend, Humphrey, an artist who’s married to Christine, a teacher, and the only woman Nick has ever truly loved. Completing the quartet is Nick’s glamorous girlfriend.

“I wanted to stage a collision between two people, one of whom was a banker being asked to justify his pay. I decided to make them be friends from way back, making a very extreme contrast between two old university friends whose lives have taken them in different directions,”

says Nicholson.

Colin Mace and Steven Pacey play the old friends, with Carolyn Backhouse and Helen Bradbury as the women in their lives.

Nicholson hopes the play, while provoking debate on the issues, is also funny. “The theatre has a long and honourable tradition of taking issues of the day and dramatising them. It’s something theatre is very good at,” he says.

“The play will never produce the mass audiences that will go and see a Harry Potter movie, but it can have impact on what’s happening. People who go to the theatre are more willling to engage with what’s going on on the stage.”

His anger at the bankers’ situation helped a lot, he says.

“I suppose one shouldn’t ask plays to perform therapy for the playwright, but the process of writing does involve a lot of research and a lot of thinking and that’s altered my voice.

“I thought it was outrageous and that those people were crooks. I don’t any longer.

These were people doing their job in the way they understood was required of them.

“I do think they weren’t very clever. That’s quite an important realisation because in the early years of the 19th Century we developed the idea that these bankers were paid a lot of money because they were geniuses.”

He doesn’t believe the play dabbles in party politics. In a way, the piece is a plea for development, for adjusting our values system, he says.

“You can’t suddenly change everything and say stop minding about money.”

■ Crash continues at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until November 13. Tickets 0113-2137700 Steve Pratt