When playwright and
film star Sam Shepard appeared on the stage of the Citizens Theatre
following the final performance of the Gorbals-based emporium's
production of Shepard's 1980 play, True West, it was a fitting close
to the theatre's winter season prior to the opening of its Christmas
show, The Jungle Book, this weekend. Here, after all, was a
latter-day Hollywood legend with counter-cultural credentials. If
ever there was an artist who encapsulated the Citz's own
schizophrenic history of classical glamour with an edge, Shepard was
it.
“It created a real
buzz,” says Citizens artistic director, Dominic Hill. “It's
exactly what the Citz should be about. For us, it's about saying
that, yes, we're in Glasgow, and, yes, we're in the Gorbals, but as
well as being local, we've also got an international outlook , and an
aspiration to continue that international outlook which the theatre's
always had.”
Following a season that
also saw Chris Hannan adapt Dostoyevsky's novel, Crime and
Punishment, such attributes are in even more abundance in the Citz's
2014 spring season, revealed here exclusively by the Herald as
tickets for all shows go on sale today. Nowhere is this more evident
than in a major revival of Stephen Jeffreys' 1994 play, The
Libertine. Jeffreys' play is a ribald study of seventeenth poet,
playwright and hedonistic lad about town John Wilmot, aka the second
Earl of Rochester.
“It's a play I've
wanted to do for a long time,” Hill says. “I wanted to do
something in period to try and capture that wonderful theatrical
exuberance that was so much a part of the old Citz. With The
Libertine, we can have our cake and eat it, because it has all the
joy and wit of a Restoration comedy, but without having to filter it
through 400 years of shifts of language. The Libertine is a very
funny play. It's hugely theatrical and incredibly rude. It's about
excess, and a man who was a sort of rock and roll celebrity of his
age who is eventually destroyed by that excess.”
Prior to The Libertine,
Hill will direct Zinnie Harris' version of August Strindberg's dark
study of cross-class sexual desire, Miss Julie. Normally regarded as
a chamber piece, Hill once again puts a play more often seen in
studio spaces onto the main stage.
“The play is
extraordinary, and Zinnie's text is great,” Hill points out.
“Zinnie's made it about more than what made the play so shocking
when it was first done. So it's more than a story about a posh girl
sleeping with a servant. There's much more here about sexual politics
between a man and a woman rather than just class.”
The Citz 2014 season
begins, however, with the first Glasgow sighting of Ciara, David
Harrower's study of one woman's uneasy relationship with art and
crime. The play won a Herald Angel for actress Blythe Duff when she
performed it at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in August, and this
revival of a co-production between the Traverse and Duff's Datum
Point company promises an even greater impact when it arrives in the
city in which it is set.
Ciara will be followed
later in January by a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night by
the experimentally inclined Filter company.
February marks the
return of Glasgow Girls, David Greig and Cora Bissett's hit musical
play based on the real life story of a group of Drumchapel schoolgirl
asylum seekers who took on the establishment and won. Co-produced by
the Citizens, the National Theatre of Scotland and an array of other
partners, Glasgow Girls arrives back on home turf following a
nomination by the Theatre Marketing Nomination for Best Musical
Production.
“It's a show that's
developed a lot since it was first here,” Hill points out, “and
2014 seemed like the right time to bring it back to Glasgow.”
Multi-culturalism is
similarly on the agenda in Refugee Boy, Lemn Sissay's stage version
of fellow poet Benjamin Zephaniah's novel about a fourteen year old
Ethiopian boy's experiences in London. Refugee Boy will tour to the
Citz in a production by West Yorkshire Playhouse.
This will be followed
by a revival of Scottish Opera's production of Verdi's Macbeth, which
Hill first directed for the company in 2005.
With the Citz becoming
a major venue for the Glasgow International Comedy Festival during
the first week in April, it seems fitting that this is followed by
Vanishing Point's tribute to the late poet and story-teller, Ivor
Cutler. As revealed in these pages earlier this year, The Beautiful
Cosmos of Ivor Cutler sees Vanishing Point team up with the National
Theatre of Scotland for a loving homage to this unique figure and the
absurd world he occupied.
With the Glasgow
Commonwealth Games raising the city's profile, the Citz responds with
Sports Day. This large-scale show brings together a compendium of
short pieces by major Scottish playwrights responding to the theme of
a school sports day. These will then be knitted together to create a
new piece of community theatre.
“It's important for
us that our non-professional work gets a high profile,” Hill says,
“and, as with everything else in the season, we want it to be on
the main stage.”
Beyond 2014, Hill has
the Citz's 70th birthday in 2015 to think about. There is
the small matter too of raising some 14 million GBP over the next
three years for ambitious plans to upgrade the theatre's facilities
as well as its physical structure in order to make it fit for
twenty-first century purpose. A model of the proposed plans sits in
Hill's office, symbolising an even brighter future for the Citizens
Theatre than the Spring season already promises.
“The Spring season is
always so much longer than the Autumn,” Hill points out. “This
allows us the opportunity to programme more diverse work. In 2014,
especially, with the referendum and the Commonwealth Games, Scotland
and Glasgow are going to be under the spotlight even more than they
normally are. We didn't want to ignore that. We want to programme a
season of work that encapsulates the spirit of aspiration that exists
here, and that makes theatre a real event.”
Tickets for the
Citizens Theatre's 2014 spring season are on sale now.
ends
Citizens Theatre Season
2014 – At A Glance
Ciara (January 21-25) –
Blythe Duff returns in David Harrower's hit solo play which won a
Herald Angel when it premiered at the Traverse in 2013.
Twelfth Night (January
28-February 1) Originally commissioned by former Tron Theatre
director Michael Boyd for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sean Holmes
and Filter reinvent Shakespeare’s rom-com as a rock and roll
rollercoaster of wit and passion
Miss Julie (February
6-15) IN the first Citizens company production of the season, Dominic
Hill directs Zinnie Harris' version of August Strindberg's play.
First seen in 2006 in a production by the National Theatre of
Scotland, Miss Julie is reset in rural Scotland during the 1920s.
Glasgow Girls (February
20-March 8) Cora Bissett and David Greig's impassioned musical based
on the real-life tale of a group of schoolgirl refugees who take on
the system returns following a successful London run.
Refugee Boy (March
12-15) Poet Lemn Sissay adapts fellow wordsmith Benjamin Zephaniah's
novel about a teenage refugee boy for the stage in a production by
West Yorkshire Playhouse.
Verdi's Macbeth (March
22-29) Revival of Dominic Hill's Scottish Opera production of Verdi's
classic, first seen in 2005.
Glasgow International
Comedy Festival (April 1-5)As one of the main venues for the
festival, the Citz will see the likes of Miles Jupp, Rory Bremner and
Ruby Wax grace its stage.
The Beautiful Cosmos of
Ivor Cutler (April 9-20) Vanishing Point team up with the National
Theatre of Scotland for an impressionistic homage to one of
Scotland's greatest wordsmiths.
The Libertine (May
3-24) – First seen in 1994 in a production b y Max Stafford-Clark
and filmed a decade later with Johnny Depp in the title role, Stephen
Jeffreys' play about poet, playwright and 24/7 hedonist John Wilmot
receives its long overdue Scottish premiere in Hill's production.
Sports Day (June 4-7) A
large-scale revue-like compendium of scenes and songs written by a
host of Scottish playwrights and based around the run-up to a school
sports day. Performed by a non-professional cast, the show will be
presented to tie in with the Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
The Herald, November 26th 2013
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