Look inside 'intimate' Scottish theatre preparing to reopen to public after 7 years

At Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre, a long-awaited seven-year redevelopment is entering its final phase.

Major building works have been completed and responsibility for most of the venue was yesterday handed back to the theatre’s management team, who have been working from a temporary space since 2018.

The Citizens’ head of productions, Laura Smith, is eagerly awaiting today’s delivery of four large containers, which will see items which have been in storage since the Citizen closed its doors, finally returned to the theatre.

“It’s really exciting to be at this point,” she says. “Seeing our theatrical trucking company rock up and unload stuff of ours back into the building will be amazing. It’s a real step forward.”

The theatre, in the city’s Gorbal’s district, has confirmed it will open in late summer, with the first cast members due back into the building for rehearsals by late July.

The theatre has undergone a transformational, multi-million pound refurbishment, the first since the category B-listed building began life as a working theatre in 1878. Initially slated for reopening in 2021, the project was delayed by the pandemic and complications with the renovation. Final costs are believed to be more than £30 million, with the Scottish Government forced to step in at the end of last year to plug an £8m funding shortfall which MSPs warned could put the theatre’s future at risk.

Now, a community festival, dubbed a “homecoming celebration”, will initially welcome local residents into the redesigned building in late summer, with readings, exhibitions, tours and workshops celebrating the theatre’s past, present and future.

In September, Small Acts of Love, a collaboration by playwright Frances Poet and composer Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue, will be the first play performed to an audience since the refurbishment. The drama, which looks at bonds formed between families on both sides of the Atlantic in the wake of the Lockerbie bombing, was researched and developed with support from families and communities who were directly affected.

Upcoming productions include Douglas Maxwell’s Glasgow-set comedy So Young, which premiered at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Citizens’ first-ever specially commissioned Christmas show, Beauty and the Beast, penned by Glasgow-based playwright Lewis Hetherington.

A new performance of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie will be presented by Dundee Rep Theatre in association with the Citizens Theatre in autumn. Meanwhile, the new Studio Theatre will host The Gift, an award-winning production by Barrowland Ballet, for younger visitors aged 18 months to five years, which will be performed in Glasgow for the first time.

While working on the building, the team uncovered an original, Victorian-era wall, obscured by plasterboard, which revealed arched doorways into the auditorium.

The original working paint frame, believed to be one of only two in the UK, has been retained, while the public can get a glimpse of it and other under-stage Victorian machinery through specially-designed viewing windows installed around the building. The frame is used by set painters painting backdrop cloths, allowing them to raise and lower the cloth while remaining at the same height.

An exhibition gallery, detailing the history and heritage of the theatre will also be erected, while the theatre’s famous elephant statues, rescued from the parapet of the nearby Palace Theatre before it was demolished in 1977, are to be returned to the public space and erected on plinths.

“We had a number of surprises when we worked on the building - some good and some not so good,” says Ms Smith. “We didn’t know about the lovely arched doorways, they had been covered up for decades by plasterboard. But we also had to remove the old safety curtain, which had been made with asbestos.”

The auditorium has been intentionally left with a similar feel to that of the original theatre, but with elements of modernisation, such as new ventilation.

“We wanted the feeling when people come into the foyer, to be ‘Wow, it’s fantastic’,” says artistic director Dominic Hill. “But then when you come into the auditorium, they feel that this is the Citz they know.”

He adds: “It’s about this whole building being a destination for Glasgow. The theatre is wonderfully intimate, but also allows us to do large scale work.”

Redesigned to include six flexible rehearsal and performance spaces including the 150-seat Studio Theatre, as well as the main auditorium, the theatre is now accessible for wheelchair users on two of its three seating levels.

An additional 200 seats have been installed, taking the total capacity to 650, both by expanding the stalls area, which has seen its central aisle removed and by replacing bench seating in the upper dress circle - which was rarely previously used due to a poor sight line to the stage - with full, banked seating.

Accessibility has been at the forefront of the redevelopment. Both the stalls and the dress circle are accessible for wheelchair users, while the new foyer allows step-free access into the main auditorium.

Meanwhile, the theatre is keen to break down barriers preventing the local community from accessing the arts.

Kate Denby, executive director of the theatre says: “With this resource, what we have is not just the ability to produce our own work, but to really bring communities together, whether that be the artistic community, or local communities. It’s really, really exciting.”

A new Gorbals Pass will give access to £5 tickets for locals with a G5 postcode.

Additional low-priced offers will also be available for under 30s, those on low income and those with access requirements.

Ms Denby adds: “The Citizens Theatre really speaks to its name, it belongs to the people of Glasgow.

“We have to remember that ticket price is not the only barrier to coming into the theatre. You have to be able to see into the building and be able to meet the people who are making theatre. So as well as the affordable ticket pricing, we’re really making sure there are lots of opportunities for people to find their way into the theatre.”

Tickets to the first stage productions will go on sale at the end of March.