I am a Citizen

Glasgow's astonishing theatre is almost ready to reopen and I canny wait

On stage with BBC Scotland’s Pauline McLean. Look how happy we are. I don’t know whether to grin or greet

Driving to the Citizen’s Theatre in a panic the other week, I had to think hard about what route to take. In the seven years since it’s been closed, I had lost the muscle memory that once took me there without having to engage brain.

Back in the day I could time it perfectly and glide in to the car park to grab one of the last parking spaces while writing a shopping list in my head. Instead I overshot, went the wrong way round the block and then had to park in the mosque round the corner as the car park is full of scaffolding poles and skips.

But finally the Heras fence that surrounds the new front of the building opened and I was in.

Two groups of journalists and theatre people were already being shown around the almost-completely renovated space. I shoved on work boots, hard hat and a fetching pink hi-viz and joined the tour.

In the rush to actually get there I had forgotten to prepare myself for the emotional onslaught of being inside the building again. It’s been a working theatre since 1878. Now, finally, it is slated to reopen in September this year. It’s like a little piece of me coming back to life.

And what life. The old girl has had a glow up and a half, addressing problems that have annoyed audiences, staff and visiting talent for decades. The original sandstone auditorium is still there. In fact it’s more visible than it has been for years, completely stripped of its plasterboard shell.

It’s now wrapped in a three-storey building that contains a completely new studio theatre, different rehearsal spaces and a streamlined and expanded set building workshop.

Everything, from getting a pre-show refreshment to getting flats out the door will be easier.

The lovely 150-seater studio will make it easier for small scale companies to put on a show in Glasgow. At the moment they have more options in the Outer Hebrides. This will be so good for the theatrical ecosystem of the city.

Putting on a fantastic show will be easier. Technical director Graham Sutherland, our tour guide, showed us the terrifying pigeon runs - technical name the fly tower - where tech staff once clambered up shoogly ladders. Then we proceeded to the bowels of the building where the same heroes and heroines crawled around among the dust of centuries to set up the beneath-stage area.

This is where the magic will now happen more efficiently

These have now been modernised and rethought to make everyone’s life easier, safer and more efficient. And all without binning the historic winches and the scenery moving equipment that dates back to the building’s earliest incarnation and is visited by theatre nerds from all around the world.

The renovation includes spy holes and windows where these are still visible. Rather than destroying the magic of the theatre they add to the experience of visiting a bit of the city’s deep history.

Ancient flywheel, more recent graffiti, sadly the smell cannot be photographed

I had forgotten, until I stood in my hard hat and almost burst into tears, how much I loved the place. Like all institutions that have been there forever, I took it completely for granted.

But when Graham showed us the new spaces for children’s drama classes (and all the Citz’s impressive community outreach work) and the spacious, airy places for waiting parents to drink coffee, I was transported back to the many Saturdays I spent while my own kids devised shows and performed what they call “sharings”.

When executive director Kate Denby described the many new pricing schemes to make theatre affordable for everyone, that was me, in fifth year at school, seeing Giles Havergal and Philip Prowse’s avant garde productions for 50p.

Up in the gods - the precipitous upper balcony - I could still see Alison Peebles in the terrifying 2009 show Sub Rosa. She played, from memory, some kind of evil procuress and the audience of 15 trooped up the vertiginous stairs for an audience with her in this musty and seldom opened space.

I have so, so many happy memories from this building. Growing up I was taken to the Citz’s Christmas shows rather than the more gallus pantos of the Kings or the Pavillion.

After years away, I took my own daughter to A Christmas Carol in 2002. She was five. We were both transfixed by Giles Havergal as Scrooge in a production that did not sugar Dickens’s harsher messages.

Their festive shows can’t be back soon enough for me. In 2022 their Red Riding Hood, staged in the borrowed Tramway, was a festive highlight. I also adored their 2019 Pinocchio and was deeply invested in that little puppet.

Red Riding Hood. Photo by Mihaela Bodlovic

The Citz’s Christmas shows were my personal introduction to theatre and while I have come round to the more vulgar charms of panto, a festive play that opens that particular door to a new generation will always have my heart.

Is it wrong to be looking forward to Christmas? Probably, especially as there are several treats to come first. The opening show, Small Acts of Love, is a musical about the Lockerbie bombing, written by Frances Poet with music by Ricky Ross.

Canny wait.

Apologies for the recent Substack silence. I suspect the reasons for this will come up at this event. Anyone thinking of doing this crazy thing themselves, or just Substack-curious, is most welcome to come along.