Giles
Havergal has always been the perfect host. During his thirty-odd year tenure as
co-artistic director of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Havergal would be
there in the foyer on each opening night, meeting and greeting with an old
school charm that came to define the Gorbals-based emporium. While many
directors prefer to duck out of view, only meeting their public once the first
night stresses have subsided, in contrast, Havergal seemed joyously unfazed by
such things. Only when he was acting in a show was he absent from his task.
All of
which makes Havergal the ideal choice as guest presenter of this year’s Critics’
Awards for Theatre in Scotland, the ceremony for which takes place at Tramway
in Glasgow this Sunday afternoon. This year’s awards see a smorgasbord of productions
and artists from the last year’s crop of home-grown shows celebrated by
Scotland’s theatre critics in its annual ceremony.
With
winners announced on the day, nominations include Birds of Paradise and the
National Theatre of Scotland’s production of My Left/Right Foot, Robert Softley
Gale’s satirical musical inspired by Softley Gale’s reaction to Jim Sheridan’s
film, My Left Foot, which saw Daniel Day Lewis cast as disabled artist Christy
Brown.
Also
in the running across the ten awards categories are the Traverse Theatre for
their productions of David Ireland’s play, Ulster American, Mouthpiece by
Kieran Hurley and Cora Bissett’s autobiographical show, What Girls Are Made Of.
The Edinburgh new writing theatre’s co-production with Oran Mor of Rob Drummond’s
response to the Glasgow School of Art fire, The Mack, also in the frame.
There
are nominations too for Perth Theatre’s production of Morna Young’s play, Lost
at Sea, and the Tron Theatre’s revival of Enda Walsh’s play, Ballyturk, as well
as its co-production of the Blood of the Young Company’s reimagining of Jane
Austen in Pride and Prejudice* (*Sort of). All of which makes Havergal’s return
to Glasgow a tantalising proposition.
“I’m
very intrigued,” he says about the possible results. “There seems to be so many
exciting things going on in Scotland just now, such as My Left/Right Foot,
which sounds terrific. There’s such a lot of varied work going on as well by
the sound of it.”
Havergal
pauses for reflection.
“It
sounds like it’s all going rather well,” he says with paternal-sounding glee. “It
will be good as well to see who’s around on the day, and to see all the new
people who are doing things. It will also be good to see people like John
Michie, who I know is up for something he’s been doing at Oran Mor, and is
working in a new kind of world in a way.”
Since
his departure from the Citz sixteen years ago, Havergal, who will be
celebrating his 81st birthday on Sunday afternoon, has directed the
likes of The Merry Widow for Opera North, with whom he also directed a Kurt
Weill-based compendium called From Brecht to Broadway.
“We
did it at the old variety theatre in Leeds where The Good Old Days used to be
filmed,” Havergal says, referring to the 1970s TV nostalgia-fest.
Havergal
has also been traveling the world, playing Nagg in Samuel Beckett’s play,
Endgame, with the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, where he also
led workshops on Tennessee Williams with drama students. Havergal has just been
doing something similar on restoration comedy with students at RADA, and will
soon be returning to Glasgow to look at Shakespeare with second years at the
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
“It’s
such fun to do,” he says of his four-week stint looking at restoration plays, “although
it’s such a long haul for students now, with that language and that world, but
seeing initial bemusement turn to delight is an absolute joy.”
Plays
Havergal worked on included two by John Vanburgh, The Provoked Wife and The
Relapse, and the less well known A Bold Stroke for a Wife by Susanna Centlivre.
“I’d
never heard of it,” Havergal admits of the latter, “but it was very intriguing.
We did do The Relapse at the Citz very early on, however. It was the very first
show Philip directed and designed, and had people like Jonathan Kent, Ian
McDiarmid and Mike Gwilym in it. Then we did it again towards the end of our
time there, with Greg Hicks and Jack Klaff.”
The
CATS had yet to be conceived when Havergal was at the Citz, though if they had
existed one suspects his work and that of his co-directors Robert David
Macdonald and Philip Prowse might well have been in the frame with some kind of
regularity. As it stands, Havergal has been the recipient of less awards than
one might expect of someone who helped transform the cultural life of Glasgow
with such a flamboyant internationalist sweep.
His
esteemed four-actor staging of Graham Greene’s novel, Travels with My Aunt, won
an Olivier Award in 1993 after transferring to the West End. A year later,
Havergal received the St Mungo Prize, a triennial award for individuals who
have done most in the previous three years to improve and promote Glasgow.
Havergal plays all this down with a typical smattering of self-deprecatory
politesse.
“People
can sometimes become obsessed by awards,” he says, “and if it’s only about who
wins then it can become ludicrous, but I think awards like the CATS are
consciousness raising. Every show that is in the running is important in terms
of recognising the excitement of what theatre can be, and that’s got to be a
good thing. The more people talk about theatre, the better.”
The Critics’
Awards for Theatre in Scotland 2019 takes place at Tramway, Glasgow on Sunday
at 4pm.
The Herald, June 8th 2019
Ends
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