Blood and Glitter: 70 Years of the Citizens Theatre

This programme contains some strong language.

Established in 1945, in the heart of Glasgow's Gorbals,

the Citizens is one of Scotland's most iconic theatres,

and has nurtured some of Britain's finest acting talent.

People like Pierce Brosnan, Rupert Everett, you know,

incredible names...

Then, who were just, you know, beautiful young boys.

It was full-on theatre.

The girls would always be naked, the boys would be androgynous,

lots of eyeshadow.

I never, ever went to Glasgow

and didn't have a kind of electrifying time.

Throughout its history, the Citz has earned a reputation

for visionary and daring productions, where nothing is off-limits.

Was questioning 20th century sexual morality,

and blowing it wide open.

This was a place where anything could happen. We could tell

really, really dangerous secrets behind the mask of it being a play.

It was blood and glitter.

And that, I thought, absolutely summed it up.

What we could do when we were at our best.

And with plans afoot for a major restoration,

this theatre, with the richest of histories, has a very bright future.

This theatre feels like what I imagined as a kid

a theatre should be - sort of special, magical, golden.

It's kind of unique, I think it's a very special space.

We go behind the scenes of this remarkable institution

as it celebrates its 70th anniversary

with a programme of modern Scottish classics...

-ALL:

-Whit?

..contemporary work, and its most audacious production for a decade.

Just south of the River Clyde in the Gorbals, the Citizens Theatre

is a Glasgow institution with an international reputation.

Since he took over as artistic director three years ago,

Dominic Hill's award-winning productions

have set new standards of excellence.

And for this anniversary year,

he's planned his most ambitious programme yet.

Onstage in 15 minutes, thank you.

What I wanted to do was a year-long programme of work that was

celebrating our place in Glasgow, in the west coast of Scotland.

You know, the heritage, the cultural heritage

that this organisation offers, I think is second to none.

One of Scotland's flagship producing theatres,

the Citizens employs almost 40 full-time staff

and stages an average of eight major shows per year, with everything -

from the sets to the costumes -

made in their in-house workshops on Gorbals Street.

The first big show of the anniversary year is a special one.

A revival of John Byrne's The Slab Boys, originally performed in 1978.

-And this is what we call a slab boy.

-You say it, "Slab boy."

Note the keen eye, the firm set of the jaw.

They are forced up under cucumber frames.

Note too the arse hanging oot the troosers.

The production reunites writer Byrne

with the play's original director, David Hayman.

'When I put the idea to him

'I said, "Look, I want to do the Slab Boys again,'

"after 30-odd years, and I'd like you to design it."

And it was an instant "yes".

And when you make that first entrance, make it "boom"!

'One of the highlights of our professional lives,

'for John and I, was that very first production.'

He lets me design it, and I let him direct it.

And we both will have the odd suggestion, and it can be

turned down and no hard feelings, or it can be accepted and used.

'It's an exchange.'

The Slab Boys explores the lives of three young lads trapped

grinding paint in the slab room of a Paisley carpet factory in 1957.

It could be set anywhere in the world,

and it could be set at any time, because there is always

going to be young working-class guys who are stuck in a dead-end job

that they hate, but they want to better themselves. I can see you now -

unemployable, scoffing Indian ink with the down-and-outs.

Going round the doors with clothes pegs,

choking weans for their sweetie money.

So don't go getting any big ideas about asking for a desk, kiddo.

You're lucky to be in a job.

As much as it's a comedy and a farce, there is

a lot of dark elements in the play.

'Like, there's a lot going on, it's not just complete

' "come and laugh your head off", really.'

I know what I'd like to cut into you.

Steady on, Phil!

Playwright and artist Byrne has also designed the set.

But backstage in the workshops, the Citizens' own team of carpenters

and painters must make John's design reality.

Scenic artist Neil is attempting to recreate Byrne's distinctive style.

What I've done is try to get them to a certain stage for him to see.

He has seen James Dean already, and I think he liked it.

He was complimentary, anyway. Don't know if he was just being nice.

No matter how hard I try,

I'm not really going to reach his standard there, you know.

So I think he will probably just mess about with bits

and just make it his.

# Who do you love? #

Upstairs, the wardrobe department are scouring

the Citz's closet for authentic 1950s fashions.

We managed to source a lot of the costume

for the male characters of the play,

but we're also making dustcoats for them because they need to

be oversized, and we couldn't find dustcoats the appropriate length.

Actor-director David Hayman will also be treading the boards

in this production, as the slab boys' militant boss, Willie Curry.

John's characterisations are so vivid,

they leap off the page at you.

Beautifully drawn, they're rich, and they're strong,

and they've got great depth and a great passion to them.

And they are all different.

Just get a match for your hair.

So, moustache-wise, you're thinking just a wee...

Just a wee, straight one.

'It's a slice of life, it's a slice of West of Scotland'

working-class life that John has captured beautifully.

He has very particular tastes, Mr Byrne. Got to be spot-on.

It's my story, disguised with laughter.

I have a dual role of both being the writer

and the designer of set and costumes as well.

It just gives you more control over how it looks and how it sounds.

So it's ideal.

The layout was exactly as it would have been in the slab room itself.

And no escape from it, apart from that one door.

So it wasn't as if you could get out without being seen, really.

You had to kind of sneak out...

..if you wanted to have a fag or something.

A week before opening night,

and the Citizens have organised their customary 50p ticket sale.

In the 1970s, the theatre's revolutionary policy of offering

all seats for just 50p won the hearts and minds of local audiences.

Since 2012, they have made it company policy to offer 50p tickets

once again.

Seems like it's always the coldest weekend of the year that's chosen

for 50p tickets, but hopefully it'll be worth it.

There are only 100 50p tickets for any show,

and one hour-long window to snap them up.

I got up about 6:30 this morning.

-7:15, maybe.

-About that, but we brought breakfast.

-We're prepared.

We've come prepared.

My granddaughter is doing The Slab Boys for higher English,

so Gran and Grandpa were given the job of coming

and waiting for the tickets for her and her friends.

She'll pay for it, she'll have to make me cups of tea

for the rest of her life for doing this on this freezing cold morning!

It's not just the 50p tickets that are selling like hot cakes.

The Slab Boys has already nearly sold out

for the first week of the run.

That's lovely, thank you so much.

Yes!

The Citizens has built a loyal audience over its 70 years.

But the building itself has been a theatre for even longer,

and first opened its doors in 1878.

I almost think of this as a bit of a pearl in a shell.

you have this original Victorian theatre,

so the auditorium, the stage and the paint frame

are all the original Victorian fixtures and fittings.

If you think of everything else that is round that pearl,

we've got the shell, and that shell has been burnt down, knocked down,

rebuilt, over the last 100 years.

And at the time of the theatre opening,

the Gorbals was one of the most socially deprived areas

in western Europe, but it could still get 2,000 people

into a theatre like this.

The Royal Princess's Theatre was famous for its pantos

that ran for an incredible nine months of the year.

But on 11 September 1945, Scotland's first permanent repertory group,

the Citizens Company, moved in.

Led by playwright James Bridie,

the renamed Citizens Theatre was an immediate success,

and from the start nurtured native talent.

Well, I was there for 3½ years,

but while I was there they were going to stage a pantomime.

We called it The Tintock Cup.

James Bridie wrote a lot of it, I took over the whole thing.

I threw out all of Bridie's work,

got hold of all sorts of other writers,

and The Tintock Cup went into orbit, it just was unbelievable.

Just took Glasgow by storm.

Stanley's time at the theatre set him firmly on the road to stardom.

And while it kept up its pantomime tradition,

by the 1960s the Citizens was also becoming known

for its increasingly challenging choice of plays.

A young English teacher took a gang of us to see

A Man For All Seasons, I think about 1961.

And I was completely transfixed.

I adored the building. I'd been in quite a few theatres

up until then - I came from a background of people

who liked to go and see variety and all the shows,

but I'd never sat through a straight play.

And suddenly this astonishing event, with a common man,

the character, a great Scottish actor called John Grieve,

who told the story directly to us.

That kind of Brechtian...pretend the fourth wall doesn't exist.

And I thought, "Well, this is it."

From The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui

to A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg,

in the 1960s, the theatre's contemporary repertoire

attracted promising young talent,

with Leonard Rossiter and Albert Finney just two of the great actors

to make their name on this stage.

The Citizens is still a hothouse

for new performers, and the theatre

runs regular night school classes for budding wannabe actors.

This term they are also working on scenes from The Slab Boys.

Hi, Lucille. Replenishing the old "jooga di aqua" I see.

"You trying to be filthy?"

It's Italian.

Return, please, driver.

Tonight, George Irving is one of 25 nonprofessional actors to be

put through his paces at the Citz.

Take the energy right through to the end of the line.

So this is a good example, a small little run of interesting tension.

George and Liz are running a scene between slab boy Spanky

and love interest Lucille.

Wondered if I fancied going with...who?

-Not you?

-Yeah! What's up with me?

-I know you aren't booked.

-Oh, do you?

But George first encountered the Citizens acting classes last year,

while he was an inmate in HMP Barlinnie.

He's one of 140 prisoners the Citizens' learning team

have worked with there since 2012.

It's quite funny just to see all the guys again in that show.

There was a scene where I played a woman,

I played a woman called Destiny, so... She was kind of sassy.

I done drama as a standard grade at school, aye.

Once I'd done all my exams I left school.

I intended to go back,

but things just took a nasty turn.

With the Citz, aye, I'm going to carry on with the Citz.

Hopefully one day, be in a play or something. That would be good.

Back with the professionals,

it's time for The Slab Boys dress rehearsal.

Whit?

I think it's a kid-on. What do you say, Spanks, the big KO?

Tell us, Hector! Please? Please!

-We're begging you!

-Put us out our misery!

-Stop acting the goat, will you? If you must know it's...

-Yes, yes?

-It's Lucille Bentley.

-Whit?!

Actor-director David Hayman is no stranger to this stage.

He's been treading the boards here for 45 years now.

Feel it. Go on, feel that.

Like bloody roughcast. Who ground these sheets?

Or should I say, who DIDN'T grind them?

In the 1970s, Hayman was a member of the Citizens Company,

and from Al Capone to Lady Macbeth,

he's probably played more roles here than anyone else.

It's a bloody disgrace, that's what it is.

Mr Barton has just blown his top out there.

What do you lot get up to in here?

I mean, that stage, I performed six nights a week,

ten months a year for ten years.

That's an extraordinary commitment to one particular stage,

so I know that stage so well, and I know this auditorium so well.

So for me to come on stage again, it's like putting on

a well-worn overcoat that I love and feel comfortable and secure in.

It's got a great warmth, it envelops you, this theatre,

and you feel safe and you feel safe enough to be courageous

and to be dynamic and to be bold.

Hayman worked under the reign of a new artistic director who arrived

at the Citizens in 1969 and remained at the helm for the next 33 years.

You've just taken over at the Citizens.

What is your first plan of attack in your campaign?

Well, I think first of all it's a very long campaign.

I think one's got to get the public in Glasgow to understand

and appreciate... Sorry, can I start again? Start again, start again!

Giles Havergal had come from running Watford Palace Theatre,

and the dynamic 31-year-old was determined to bring

his passion for drama to the Gorbals.

It isn't just the actors on the stage, it is the actors

and the audience fusing together to make something which is

palpable and quite different.

It was the fact it was Glasgow... was a terrific challenge,

the theatre had had some sort of bad times before we came,

and it was interesting to see if we could reconnect with the community

and with young people here and make the theatre meaningful.

I mean, it should be "burn the place down, throw that man out"

or "let's all go and see it anyway."

Havergal recruited a group of young actors fresh from drama school

for a radical new Hamlet,

casting local lad Hayman - in blond curls - for the lead role.

"Hamlet depicted as a gibbering oaf."

-HE LAUGHS

-"Tasteless in the extreme, Bailie says."

"Oh, Hamlet..." What was great was,

when they discovered I played the final scenes in a jockstrap,

enough just to cover my privates,

and the headlines in the papers was "a naked Hamlet," so all the schools

who had booked their schoolkids to come and see it cancelled!

It was really exciting on the first night, one of the most exciting

things you can feel in the theatre,

where half the people cheer and half the people boo.

And there were terrible notices.

And what happened was the schoolkids decided this was too exciting

to miss, so they came along on their own.

Every night we had queues round the block.

It was a big scandal, and members of the administrative staff left,

and actually my job was on the line.

And by the end, schools were rebooking. And we survived it.

And it said to the world, it said to this city and to Scotland,

we're doing things differently, we're not going to take

normal classics and dust them down like museum pieces,

we're going to reinvent them, we're going to reinvigorate them,

we're going to look at them from a different perspective

and try and unearth aspects of the play

that you may not have been aware of before,

and that was genuinely exciting.

The Citizens' bold and dangerous reputation

soon lured talent from across the UK.

Well, it was the place to be. Everyone wanted to be at the Citz.

The auditions for the Citizens Theatre were a cattle call,

and there would be literally

hundreds of actors waiting to get in.

It was that kind of jungle drums things that run within the theatre.

It had a reputation that had spread far beyond the boundaries

of Glasgow, indeed Scotland.

I mean, they were an internationally renowned company.

This one is The Vortex, where I play Nicky Lancaster,

a young drug-addicted pianist.

I think, yes, for me it was the only place

really in my career where the reality lived up to the expectation.

I never, ever went to Glasgow

and didn't have a kind of electrifying time.

Giles Havergal also brought his most talented collaborators

to the Gorbals, including writer and translator

Robert David MacDonald and designer Philip Prowse.

Everybody said to me in London,

"What on earth are you going there for? A ghastly place to go."

And it was a very difficult question to answer.

Giles got me to go up to Glasgow and have a look at the theatre,

and it was beautiful. I mean, it was absolutely beautiful.

It really was and is

the most beautiful acting theatre in the country, I think.

And so I fell for it.

And, you know, stayed there for 34 years, nearly, I think.

Philip Prowse was a designer whose sumptuous sets

and exacting costumes were feats of the imagination.

The silhouette is only arrived at by an immense amount of

kind of engineering work going on underneath the frock.

The essential thing is to create a world in its own terms

on the stage in three dimensions,

which those people in those costumes become the natural inhabitants of.

Prowse soon began directing as well as designing plays,

including a flamboyant production of Noel Coward's Semi-Monde.

It was Coward's view of a society which already had

the seeds of disintegration in it,

so he couldn't have known that, but which was going to disintegrate.

That was what was, to me, moving and interesting.

Among the 30-strong cast was a young Pierce Brosnan.

For me it was just bedazzling. All his sets were just sumptuous.

As an actor, just fed you the performance, fed you the life

and the space and the time that you were supposed to be in,

because of his design.

-I'm afraid you're rather a naughty boy, aren't you?

-In what way?

The usual ways.

Prowse turned his radical vision to everything from Oscar Wilde

to Jacobean revenge tragedies.

There was an irreverence as well to it.

Someone might say to him,

"You can't do that with Shakespeare."

And Philip would just say,

"Oh, darling, fuck 'em."

Hieronymus Bosch meets Dada, meets surrealism, meets Noel Coward.

But Philip's thing was

to make us look as wonderful as possible,

in the right way, so that the focus was on you when it was your turn.

Philip always directed like a film director, really.

So the audience always knew where to look, at who and when.

Playwright and translator Robert David MacDonald

was the third man in Havergal's triumvirate.

When he died in 2004, it was after dedicating

the largest part of his working life to the Citizens.

Well, I think if, in a theatre, you can't pretend,

you can't pretend anywhere else.

I mean, I've got several regular current obsessions.

Of course, like anybody else,

I'm concerned with the three things I'm told you're not allowed

to mention in English conversation - sex, politics and religion.

By the time it comes down to writing a play,

they are the only three things I want to write about.

An intellectual who translated in six different languages,

MacDonald had wide cultural horizons.

He was mad about Goldoni

and its Venetian dialect.

Now, he could do that and he could translate it.

So that was a wonderful thing to have on the premises -

very, very extraordinary privilege to have.

He was the cleverest, funniest, gentlest, generous man I'd ever met.

He changed my life, actually.

Macdonald's mastery of languages meant that the Citizens could

take on virtually any play in the European repertoire.

And in his time at the Citz, he would produce 60 original translations

and write 12 new works for the company.

Together the trio would ensure the theatre's phenomenal success

over 3½ decades.

The Citizens has continued the commitment to original work,

and for its spring production,

Dominic Hill is directing a brand-new play.

-Morning.

-Morning, Dominic.

-Morning, Jason.

Since he started as artistic director, Hill has made it

Citizens policy to put on Scottish plays that will resonate with

a local audience, from Glasgow Girls to The Slab Boys...

-All right, cheers.

-..and now, Fever Dream: Southside.

Fever Dream is about a couple in their thirties

and they've just had a child

and dealing with childhood and dealing with bringing up

a child in a city is absolutely at the heart of the piece.

Fever Dream is a surreal comic thriller

by local playwright Douglas Maxwell,

set in the streets around the theatre in Glasgow's south side.

It's our first completely new play written for us,

while I've been here,

so just for having that kind of a sense of

a play for and about its community, which is I think

partly what we're about, it seemed perfect for us.

Back in the rehearsal room,

they're starting with a full read-through of the play.

Please, PLEASE, ssh.

Mummy needs to... Oh, God, Mummy needs to LIVE. What is it?!

And mourn, in lamentation deep, how life and love are all a dream.

-Know what I mean? By the way.

-LAUGHTER

The job is the same whether it's a new play or an old play.

This play is a huge challenge.

I used to joke to Douglas that it actually

was an impossible play to put on.

I've never written it in stage directions, but Terry's roar,

I've always heard morphing...

HE ROARS

..into...

# We-eh-eh-eh-ll...

# You know you make me wanna... #

# Shout Look, my hands jumping... #

in 2011, Dominic Hill came from Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre

to run the Citizens.

From King Lear and Hamlet to Pinter, Beckett

and a dramatisation of Crime and Punishment,

in the last four years he has directed classic plays

that draw on the theatre's rich repertory tradition.

But this is the first time he will direct

a brand-new work at the Citz.

The identity of the work in relation to the building is really important.

I want people to think that that's a Citz show,

and whether that's because of the way

it's been created or the subject matter,

or whether it's just about the bravery

and ambition of the production style,

and I think that just comes back to the idea of giving

the audience a really exciting, interesting time.

Head of stage Jamie and deputy Jason

are in charge of the metalwork for the production.

In their hands, around 300 rods of steel

will be transformed into Fever Dream's hyperreal locations,

and today, they are working on a giant set of park gates.

All of this frame flies out about six-and-a-half metres

in the air above people,

so got to be pretty substantial,

more than your normal garden gates.

The director just told us

that he wants them to magically open,

with no-one operating them. So...

We'll just have to have a good think about it and see how we go about it.

Don't worry.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Dominic is busy rehearsing his actors,

with only two weeks to opening night.

..rematerialise down at the baths and make yourself useful.

I go where the wind blows me.

Dominic pulls you in for two hours and maybe work on one or two scenes

and really takes it just back to basics.

Just read the scene, listen to each other and then you do it

so many different ways.

Now we're going to do one more time, there is a bed,

so play it exactly as you played it before.

-Mm-hmm.

-It just happens to be that...

-we can't see the bed.

-OK.

-You can, but we can't.

-Oh, she just walked straight through it.

-Your head is actually working.

You're not coming in going, "I've got this part, I've nailed it."

You're going, "No matter what I do here, I'm going

"to be trying so much different stuff,"

and you leave so inspired that you're like,

"I'm going to stay in for another four hours and keep doing work."

Dominic wants the best performance from everyone,

including a surprise addition to the cast.

In the script, it says Terry is a seven-foot pterodactyl.

I was a little bit concerned!

A dinosaur? OK.

Terry is meant to arrive, smashing through the roof, landing,

and he's meant to disappear by flying up back through

the hole he has made in the roof.

Can you walk a little bit?

'Without millions of pounds, that's very hard to do on stage.'

With limited funds, there is only one way to breathe life into Terry,

and the Fever Dream actors

must quickly learn to become skilled puppeteers.

Now's the day! Now's the hour! See the front o' battle lour.

A lot of my dialogue at the start is actually Burns poetry.

So it's very old Scots language.

Then mixed with modern-day broad Glaswegian.

Fuckin' yas! Fuckin' hing me!

It's fit-up week, and the technical crew have just three more days

to hang, build and paint the set on stage.

CREW MEMBERS SING

Sound effect.

PTERODACTYL ROARS

For this play, Guy has to plot 79 sound cues around

the musical score to create Fever Dream's distorted version of reality.

Sound effect.

PTERODACTYL ROARS

Quite a modern soundscape, but we are trying to be surreal

at the same time, so we've got babies crying...

Sound effect.

BABY CRIES

Helicopters, I've got fly-bys, helicopters hovering,

electricity for the gates.

ELECTRICITY BUZZES

Bzz. Yeah. I don't want to spoil anything.

# You know you make me wanna

-# Shout

-Look, my hands jumping

-# Shout

-Throw my hands up and

-# Shout

-Throw my hair back and

-# Shout

-Come on now

-# Shout

-Don't forget to say you will... #

It's Friday night, and the Fever Dream actors are about to go on.

Stand by one and two.

HELICOPTER BLADES WHIR

No-one can sleep with that bloody thing

buzzing away all the time like a...

It's a sad day when your baby monitor

is drowned out by the sounds of a police helicopter at...

What time is it? Nine in the morning.

I don't know, it's just quite true to how Govanhill is.

And the helicopters outside your window.

Which is something I learned about when I lived on the south side,

when I first moved here, it was like,

"Oh, my God, what is going on?"

I didn't quite know where it was going to start with, and then

it all came together at the end and the characters were fantastic.

I thought it was very well done, I really enjoyed it.

Lulu's story is made from bone fragments,

moments of connection between strangers.

How the fuck is that Lulu's story?

Different Lulu!

Who was my favourite character?

Terry-dactyl.

Just fell for his red eyes.

PTERODACTYL ROARS

A lot of people said, "Oh, God, it's bonkers."

And there's been a really nice sense of presenting

something for an audience which is completely surprising,

which is something many of them won't have seen before.

Hopefully they're laughing at this and having a good time,

and the show that will be on in two weeks is really different

and thought-provoking, and important in a very, very different way.

The Citizens has always been part of local life in Glasgow.

But as well as bringing people to the theatre,

it's been on a mission to take theatre to the people.

In 1967, they created TAG, or "Theatre About Glasgow,"

one of the first touring and learning companies in the UK.

And the Citizens outreach programme remains an important part

of their work, with classes both inside and outside the building.

Today, the stage is a school assembly hall, and the actors,

40 primary seven pupils drawn from two schools in North Lanarkshire.

THEY SING

We rehearse in one school

while the set is being built in the other school.

And it's kind of like the circus has come to town.

This massive structure arrives

and just transforms the school hall into a theatre.

For the last three years,

the Citizens have produced their dramatised version

of Theresa Breslin's children's book Divided City

in over 70 schools across central Scotland.

Divided City, it's about sectarianism and bigotry,

and these two boys called Graham and Joe.

Graham is a Rangers supporter and Joe is a Celtic supporter.

We always work with two schools that are within walking distance

of each other, a Catholic school and a nondenominational school.

Once we've got those two groups together,

then we mix up the casting.

My granda is in the Orange Lodge and we're not really Celtic fans,

we're more Rangers fans.

# You're not very good You're not very good... #

Since 2012, over 3,000 young people have taken part in Divided City

and experienced its message of friendship and tolerance.

# Celtic!

# Rangers! #

I thought it was absolutely amazing.

I was kind of a bit worried about it at the beginning

when we first heard he was playing the opposite side to what he would

normally be, but I think that has opened up everybody's eyes as well.

And with funding confirmed for next year,

this schools theatre project looks set to run and run.

APPLAUSE

The Citizens has always reached out to connect with Glasgow.

When Giles Havergal and co arrived in the Gorbals, they soon realised

that at the heart of a theatre's success must be its audience.

Not matter when you came to the Citz, Giles would be

standing at the foyer, inside, waiting for you.

-Come on, ladies, in you go. Hope you enjoy it.

-Thank you.

Waiting for everyone and making them feel

the most important person that had walked through that door.

I mean, the audience lets us know very quickly if they don't like it.

They just stay away, they don't come.

Nothing is more important than the audience,

except possibly the actors.

You need actors and you need an audience -

the rest of us can go hang.

First of all, we reduced the seat price to 50p.

If you were unemployed or old or young, you didn't pay at all.

And the first performance of every production was free,

completely, didn't matter who you were.

Because if they don't come on that basis,

they're never going to come, we'd give up.

There was a time when theatre was thought of

as a middle-class pursuit.

But here you are in the Gorbals,

one of the strongest working-class areas in Glasgow at the time,

and they're putting on plays by Goethe and Schiller, Beaumarchais...

De Musset, as well as Shaw and Shakespeare and Brecht

and O'Casey, and they're offering it up to anyone who wants to come in,

and it's a formidable conceit when I think of it.

At the time, you didn't.

You just went, "This is kind of mad."

The Citizens kept their tickets at 50p for as long as they could.

By 1980, they were still only 90p.

They were so clever, the Citz, in saying,

"We want to have the freedom to really present you

"things you've never seen before and will be very unusual,

"so in return we're not going to charge you that much."

That's just brilliant.

The cheap tickets encouraged their audience to

take a risk on the more unusual European fare.

They would do some obscure play that they'd found by

some sort of Norwegian, there would be a Shakespeare,

there would be an Oscar Wilde and there would be a modern play.

And it was like an ongoing conversation,

you'd try something, a play by Goldoni, for instance,

we put up one, we thought, "Will this work?",

it went very well, so we put up another one.

It was an education,

it was a university of...

intention and derring-do.

But behind the bold play choices

and the cheap seats, Giles Havergal was running a very tight ship.

It seems to me extremely important that

if you're lucky enough to be an organisation that is

in receipt of public funds, you simply cannot spend more than that.

And we fought really, really hard to keep -

and it was sometimes absolutely a white-knuckle ride -

but we did manage it, we never went into deficit.

You really just have to live from one year to the next, you know,

and if you manage to build from one to the other, it's rather a bonus.

Everyone should find out from Giles Havergal, "How did you do that?"

I don't think anyone's ever done it as well as the Citizens Theatre.

That's just the management of it,

that's not the fantastic design and the fantastic literary choices,

or the wonderful actors. The management is remarkable,

and unmatched, I think.

I don't know of any other theatre that has managed to charge so little

for such rare fare.

In tribute to the European outlook of Giles Havergal's triumvirate,

this anniversary year, Dominic Hill has programmed

a revival of one of Robert David MacDonald's

most powerful adaptations.

I wanted to do a show that was perhaps different

from those others, that wasn't

necessarily just entertaining

and celebratory, but actually had...

that was a nod to the more serious, darker side of our repertoire.

And I was very aware of course, as everybody was, that while

we were celebrating our 70th birthday, there was another

70th anniversary going on, which is the end of the Second World War.

Based on Gitta Sereny's book,

Into That Darkness is a dramatised series

of intense interviews between the journalist

and Nazi extermination camp leader Franz Stangl.

I have been listening to you for two-and-a-half hours now.

And I think it is best if I explain what I want.

I don't want to know what you did or didn't do.

I want to know how you see yourself as a human being.

Do you understand me?

I thought I knew about this period of history, but I didn't.

So that's been really, really important for me,

to actually start to engage with this period of history.

Why the freight cars?

The nakedness, the public undressing,

the obscene examinations for valuables

and the final, naked run under the lash of whips to the gas?

What was that all for?

To condition those who had to carry out the operation!

To harden them! To make it possible for them to do what they did.

They could never have stood it without that hate.

You were part of this - did you hate?

I would never let anyone dictate to me who to hate.

The only people I would hate

would be those who are out to destroy me.

What struck me about the play was Gitta's...

She's fascinated with not boxing up people like Franz Stangl,

criminal minds, she's not interested in going, "They're monsters."

I shall be back in three hours, you can give me your answer then.

She's much more interested in how we find out

why these people did what they did.

As well as a busy year of productions,

the Citizens management team has another monumental task ahead.

Although the foyer was rebuilt in 1990,

parts of the building are now nearly 140 years old,

and massive restoration work is urgently required.

Last year, the Citz announced plans for a redesign,

which it's now estimated will cost £20.5 million.

If they can find the money, it will be

the most comprehensive renovation since the theatre was built.

Dominic has summoned an all-staff meeting

for an update on the architectural plans.

The pieces that we are taking away are basically

the foyer space at the front,

the buildings down the side

and the kind of lean-to pieces that are the offices.

We had lots of comments from a number of you, about 400.

I think a lot of that has been fed in and incorporated

in this next revision.

As artistic director, part of Dominic's mission is to ensure

a bright future for the second-oldest operational theatre in the UK.

It's not a vanity project, it's not something we just fancy doing,

we've got to do something to save the Citz, so this is it.

And at the same time, it's a brilliant opportunity for us

to expand and extend the kind of work we are doing at the moment.

Make the building more accessible,

make it more a focal point for the community and for Glasgow.

They've already raised over half of the funds, but there's still

£8.5 million to find before building work can start in spring 2017.

It has to happen, we have to do it.

The building is desperately in need of repair,

and if we don't do it, our future is in jeopardy.

But for now, the show must go on,

and the Citizens are gearing up for

the most ambitious show of their anniversary year,

in partnership with the Edinburgh International Festival.

Their summer blockbuster will be a new adaptation

of Alasdair Gray's epic novel Lanark.

So if we do work out a way of suspending him mid-stage,

those two things will open out, therefore revealing an empty space.

Before production starts, director Graham Eatough

and designer Laura Hopkins are detailing their vision for the show

to the Citizens technical staff.

And then he's left suspended mid-stage as those two track out.

Lanark enters through the slit in the clock.

With multiple scene changes over the nearly four-hour-long play,

it's a gargantuan task.

It's going to be tough.

But it might be that we need to set up the stage so that we can

actually do the final bit of welding and fabrication on stage.

Let me look into it.

So this is the sort of moment that the set builds towards,

I suppose, which is when we are

supposed to be in the interior of Alasdair Gray's head.

So all this makes sense as a shape of a skull.

We're all in Alasdair's head.

Alasdair Gray spent 25 years writing and illustrating

his 1982 novel Lanark, now considered

one of the most important Scottish novels of the 20th century.

When somebody asks you to describe your book Lanark,

what do you say to them?

I say it is a Scottish, petit bourgeois model of the universe.

Just like that?

Yes, I've rehearsed it and honed it down to as few words as possible.

Part heavily disguised autobiography, part dystopian nightmare,

in Grey's 560-page tome,

the action moves from a more naturalistic post-war Glasgow

to the magic, realist world of Unthank

inhabited by main character Lanark.

Prologue: A man plunges into water.

Darkness, cold and shock.

Holds his breath, fights.

Holds, fights. Holds.

Then lets go.

For me, it acted as some kind of strange guidebook to the city.

So it seemed entirely accurate in its descriptions

of this slightly gloomy city with a lack of daylight,

where they'd forgotten what the word for "dawn" was.

I think it gave a lot of artists licence to think about their work

and their work's relationship with Glasgow

in a completely different way.

It seemed very much the kind of thing we should be doing,

particularly in our 70th year.

You know, it's a Glasgow story, it's absolutely a contemporary classic.

Playwright David Greig had the near-impossible task

of adapting Alistair's book for the stage.

The nature of it is, it's three parts.

Each part is about an hour long.

That's nearly a full-length play these days.

So poor Graham has to try and put together

and stage a full-length play every week.

I knew that Graham and David would create it in a way

that would be exciting and accessible

and unusual and thrilling and a theatrical event.

Two weeks in and the team are working out the sinister scenes

in the nightmarish underworld of "the Institute."

You've eaten enigma de filets congales.

What on earth did you think it is?

It's processed human meat.

Did nobody tell you what we do with the softs?

Ugh, I didn't know.

Let me be sweet... Let me be sweet with you now.

Lift!

But there's one person missing from the rehearsal process.

Just before production started, Alasdair Gray

was admitted to hospital after breaking his back in a serious fall.

We were really lucky, actually, to be able to work with him

before the rehearsals started, and he was really supportive

and very generous with his ideas throughout that period,

so we are constantly hoping for his speedy recovery and hoping that

he'll be recovered enough in time to come along and see the opening.

With the opening just two weeks away, the carpentry workshop

had to come up with solutions to some unusual set requests.

Head of workshop Denis has been working under this roof for 32 years.

Some of the designs designers come out with,

they have no idea how it's going to be made.

You've got to sit down and think about it.

Sometimes, actually, I wake up during the night

realising I know how to build it now.

Quickly write it down on a pad before you go back to sleep.

Over the years, I've realised nothing is impossible.

If somebody wants something, we'll figure a way to do it.

So, we're just strengthening it up just now because at the back end

here we're going to have projection screens nailed down.

The first large spectacles I've ever made!

Everyone is working flat-out to get Lanark ready for its opening.

But no matter how busy they are, the staff still find time

to honour an important Citizens tradition.

Friday tea.

We're stage management and we are the best at Friday tea.

BOTH: Yeah.

I think the worst department is probably the stage boys

with their Rich Tea biscuits.

That was a pretty easy one to beat.

We just set up and then at four o'clock everybody piles up...

..and demolishes it.

Always workshop first, isn't it?!

LAUGHTER

From wardrobe to box office, marketing to the stage boys,

each week it falls to a different team to provide Friday tea

for the rest of the theatre.

We all enjoy it until it's our turn to be baking, up till midnight.

Um... But it is,

it's a chance for us all to get together as a company.

There's an unwritten rule that, whatever you do,

at four o'clock you should break.

Generally, we try to make sure that it's sociable

and that we're not talking about work here.

But it's soon back to the grindstone.

It's the last week of July and just seven days before Lanark opens.

Playing eponymous hero Lanark

Sandy Grierson is in every single scene of the play

and is under pressure to learn a superhuman amount of material.

I've certainly never done a four-hour show.

There is no situation with this that's arisen that

I haven't been in before, other than the sheer scale of it, I suppose.

And that's the constant sort of thing that,

in your moments of weakness, gets the better of you.

You think, "Oh, my God!

This is never going to come together in time."

How the fuck am I going to climb this fucking scaffolding?

Happiness!

Lanark keeps saying "this is hell." That's what it is.

It's like the levels of hell.

In the beginning, Unthank is a sort of nightmare landscape and world.

There were moments where I thought I WAS in a nightmare,

but again, that's the creative process.

I've been there before in shows.

Just about any show you do that is going to be worthwhile, you need...

It needs to not follow a kind of form that you know what's happening.

You need to try and push yourselves, and be pushed to go somewhere

that might not be the most comfortable place to go.

Get out the road, or I'll spoil your picture.

OK.

Oof!

The show's final stage design features a richly textured web

of technical elements with video projections that will help

bring Lanark's story to life.

It's a combination of a lot of Alasdair's original drawings

that have been reanimated

and then a load of other material.

There's a lot of different projection screens,

projection surfaces.

Probably more than we originally intended.

We're waiting to film Sandy.

That will be Sandy moving around going "Aah!"

Slow-motion flailing or fast flailing?

No, that's good. Underwater flailing.

HE GASPS

It's August, and, ready or not,

it's time for Lanark to take to the stage.

And the team have moved their ambitious show

from the Citizens to the Lyceum Theatre for its world premiere

at the Edinburgh International Festival.

My first production ever. My professional debut.

Terrifying, that is!

I haven't even had time to...

Normally, you have time to do something with the dressing room,

but there's not even been any time for that. It's...

It looks like a teenager's bedroom.

TANNOY: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your quarter-hour call.

You have 15 minutes. You have 15 minutes.

Including panic!

Delighted. Splendid. Overjoyed!

-Take us to the specialist departments.

-Rise.

I really like the staging.

The thing with the projection works incredibly well.

But the dialogue is very clever. It's just a fantastic adaptation.

It's retained the humour of what I know of the book,

even though most of that is in the narrative in the book,

a lot of it has managed to work its way into the dialogue.

-ALL: Our name is Duncan Thaw.

-We are an odd child.

-Clever but...

-Sick. Sick with asthma.

-Sick with eczema.

And sick with a peculiar determination to get our own way.

No!

ALL: We are not very good at being happy.

I think the spirit of Alasdair Gray shone through very much.

I think...it was great fun.

I think it's done incredibly well.

Like, the dialogue... Everything is so sharp and fantastic.

Sadly, Alasdair Gray couldn't make it here in person.

But Lanark's creative team have made sure

he is very much part of the play.

Alasdair Gray?

I'm Lanark.

It was really weird at the end, looking through Alasdair Gray's eyes

especially when he's in hospital just now, you know?

That was really, really...a bit close to the bone, as it were.

Goodbye.

APPLAUSE

It is a very proud moment.

I just think the fact that we managed to pull it off, really.

It was a really risky undertaking, I think, for everybody involved

and took a real lot of belief, not just from the creative team,

really from everybody who's been involved with the show.

Dominic at the Citizens really believed in us all the way through

and never kind of wavered in that belief, even when we were worried.

I'm not sure it's sunk in yet, to be honest.

I think I'm still kind of really

understanding what we've all been through.

The Citizens Theatre has been staging bold and challenging productions

for seven decades now,

and tonight they're holding their 70th birthday party.

Stars of stage and screen from around the world

have come back to help them celebrate.

-We were all in my first job together.

-That's right.

-Yes.

-I love the walking up and the dancing.

-Yes.

-Let's walk up again.

In, three, four...

And then back.

Throughout its history, the theatre has been thrilling audiences

and launching careers...

The boldness, the daring, the opportunities that it gave me

as a young actor...

It gave me the most amazing opportunities.

I wouldn't be standing here today, or have the career I have today

if it wasn't for the Citz.

With latest show Lanark a resounding success,

both in Edinburgh and back home in Glasgow,

the Citizens is still nurturing the next generation of talent.

To have finished a play like Lanark, which was such an epic,

long journey and a big thing for all of us involved,

and yet to be topping it off with this is...

It's amazing.

I felt so honoured

and privileged to be here tonight

and be a part of this Citizens family because it's just the best.

And the theatre remains at the pinnacle of Scottish cultural life

here in the heart of Glasgow.

So the work was important,

but it was more the community that the theatre had.

And I think Dominic has brought that back

and I really feel it here again.

I mean, you can hear what it's like.

It's just absolutely amazing. Every one of these people here

are here to celebrate the Citizens Theatre

that we've all loved for however long.

The place is, as they say, full of love.

It's been an amazing year.

It's been a sort of wonderful mixture of the old and the new.

There's a real sense of the history of the place,

but also the huge capital project.

What are the next 70 years going to be?

You can't let it fall down. You can't.

We've all got to help.

And all the people who've ever worked here will.

And all the people who have ever been in the audience

I'm sure will, because it's magical.