Joyce McMillan on theatre: Three factors truly arresting Citizens' development

Published on Wednesday 1 September 2010 12:52

Shuffling the top brass at the Glasgow institution might improve its fortunes, but there are also deeper questions of funding and public interest all theatres must address

• Jeremy Raison presided over hugely successful productions, including The Girl in the Yellow Dress at the Traverse in Edinburgh last month, starring Marianne Oldham and Nat Ramabulana.

IT WAS back in January 2009 that David Leddy's Sub Rosa first opened at the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow and began its journey towards international fame and success. Set in the hidden backstage spaces of the magnificent old theatre in the Gorbals, it combined a superbly written story about the savage exploitation of 19th-century music hall workers with a site-specific experience about as atmospheric and thrilling as they come, as the audience moved from the hidden spaces under the stage towards a chilling and exquisitely lit final scene, staged among dustsheets in the disused upper circle.

Sub Rosa was re-created in Edinburgh during the recent Fringe, to widespread acclaim; and its success - like the equally impressive box-office triumph at the Traverse of the Citizens' South African two-hander, The Girl In The Yellow Dress - reflects the powerful role the Citizens' has developed in recent years, as a partner in co-productions with theatres as distinguished as the Market Theatre of Johannesburg, and as a Glasgow base for some of the most exciting theatrical talent emerging in Scotland.

It's significant, though, that neither of these fine shows is the kind of spectacular main-stage production for which the Citizens' was built, 140 years ago, and for which it became world famous during the 1970s and early 80s, in the heyday of the great triumvirate of directors, Giles Havergal, Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald.And it's this shift in theatrical energy away from the main stage, and into the studios and foyers, that seems to have led to last week's sudden change of leadership at the theatre, with the resignation of joint artistic directors Jeremy Raison and Guy Hollands and of two board members, including the chairman, Roderick Macpherson.

The changes followed the commissioning of a report from arts consultants Burns Owen, who were asked to assess the challenges facing the theatre in terms of audience development, likely reductions in public subsidy and much-needed refurbishment of the building, but who seem also to have raised questions about its artistic leadership and the quality of its main-stage productions, which have certainly - in recent years - been the least distinguished aspect of its output.

It is widely acknowledged that the work in the theatre's studios has been excellent, with productions such as Ron Butlin's The Sound Of My Voice achieving huge critical and box-office success; and the theatre's outreach work, supervised by Guy Hollands as former director of the young people's company TAG, has been groundbreaking in its development of community theatre for the 21st century.

The problem with this strand of activity is that it generates very little income.

Ask those who have worked at the Citizens' why it struggles to produce main-stage productions on the same scale as its rival, Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum, and they will point to three factors.

First, the Citizens' has suffered a severe decline in the real value of its public subsidy over the past decade, with the combined Scottish Arts Council and Glasgow City Council support for the Citizens' and TAG increasing by barely 4 per cent in cash terms over that period.

Second, the Citizens' tradition of low ticket prices - it was once famous for the giant message "All Seats 50p" painted on the wall of the theatre - makes it difficult to raise extra money at the box office; a top-whack ticket for the next main-stage production at the Lyceum will cost you 28, compared with 17.50 at the Citizens'.

Third, the relative size of its auditorium - remember that closed upper circle - means that even when it has a main-stage success on its hands, it has only 454 seats to sell.

All of this suggests that, however much the Citizens' Board may juggle with the personnel at the top, the theatre will struggle to perform substantially better than it did under the joint direction of Raison and Hollands, who have presided over an increasingly successful effort to attract younger audiences and to extend the theatre's appeal towards new groups, including Glasgow's large Asian community.

Last year, the company scored its highest box-office income ever, and played to overall audiences of 73 per cent; not a bad record in tough times, and in a city where so many other major theatres compete for audiences.

There has been some public crossfire, in recent days, about whether Jeremy Raison jumped from his job, or was pushed.

A softly-spoken old Etonian, who made his home in Glasgow long before he was appointed to the Citizens' in 2003, he certainly has a substantial track record both as a director and as a writer and is unlikely to lack offers of freelance work; and Guy Hollands is still in discussions with the Citizens' about a possible continuing role at the theatre.

Far more important than the fate of these individual directors, though, is the question of whether Glasgow, and Scotland, still wants and needs this beautiful old theatre enough to give it the support - both at the box-office and in subsidy - that it needs in order to survive and thrive.

As a theatrical space, the Citizens' main stage is second to none in Scotland; its history, its shape, its atmosphere is infinitely seductive. To fill it with theatre that thrills 21st-century audiences, though, on an inevitably slender budget, is a task that requires a touch of genius, of the kind shown by Giles Havergal when he first arrived at the Citizens' 40 years ago.And if there is one thing of which we can be sure, it's that the board of the Citizens' will not be alone among arts organisations, over the next year, in facing tough questions about the whole purpose and viability of their organisation; and in being tempted to seek new leadership for the toughest times we have seen in a generation.

• The Girl In the Yellow Dress is at the Citizens' Theatre from 21 September until 9 October, followed by Jeremy Raison's final production, A Clockwork Orange, from 13 October to 6 November. Guy Hollands directs David Greig's The Monster in the Hall from 2-13 November. www.citz.co.uk