Theatre reviews: Close | Maybe Tomorrow

Close, Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★

Maybe Tomorrow, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★

There are no unbreakable rules in theatre; but it is true that it tends to be at its best when it’s fully living up to its historic reputation as a dangerous and dodgy art form, likely to encourage all kinds of decadent bad behaviour in those who fall for its charms.

Glasgow’s old Close Theatre Club - tucked down a close beside the Citizens’, and dramatically burned down in 1973 - was a venue that, for eight years after its opening in 1965, revelled gloriously in that bad reputation; and it’s a joyful experience to see its story celebrated this week by the Citizens’ Young Company in Close, as the very first production in the new studio theatre that now sits on the exact site of the old building.

Written by the company with dramaturg Jenny Knotts - herself a granddaughter of the Citizens’ legendary late front of house manageress Mary Sweeney - the 70-minute play starts out with a few black-clad young performers in Cabaret-style bowler hats beginning to lead us through a well-researched history of the club, while Jamie Wardrop’s AV design provides plenty of old archive images and unearthed news stories.

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Not for long, though; because this 14-strong young company have taken the point that the Close, in its heyday, was all about challenging form, culture and conventional thinking. And in no time, the five original performers find themselves almost - if not quite - overwhelmed by the rest of the company, pouring on stage with racks of costumes, and starting to stage souped-up 21st century fragments of the avant-garde plays that made the Close famous, while Wardrop’s screens explode in a riot of contemporary social media shapes and messages, as if the whole story were happening right here and now.

So in Neil Packham’s fast-moving production, we witness the Charles Marowitz production of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus that was halted mid-scene for alleged disrespect to the Queen. We see adapted clips from Olwen Wymark’s The Inhabitants and Heathcote Williams’s AC/DC, each lovingly brought to life by guest directors; we see dramatisations of interviews with those who - as actors, theatregoers, or neighbours - experienced the great days of the Close, as theatre and film club, late-night gathering-place, and Glasgow’s first unofficial gay bar.

And the result is an exhilarating celebration of a show, in which the rising generation of Citizens’ theatre-makers remind us - at a time of huge bureaucratic and financial pressure on theatre - that this art-form is meant to question and disturb, to break down barriers, to smash and remake its own forms; and above all, to embody a quest for freedom, and for every kind of fun.

If Close is a show about theatre that works well as both entertainment and social history, this week’s Play, Pie Pint show Maybe Tomorrow is a show about showbiz that falls flat within the first ten minutes, never to rise again. The scene is the dressing room of fading musical star Sian Silver, now 75 years old, and clinging for dear life to a terrible variety gig in Scunthorpe.

Between shows, she is plagued by various visitors, including her current theatre boss, the manager who broke her heart and career 50 years ago, and her younger self, a red-haired and starry-eyed beauty born to play Annie. And as a play-with-songs about old age, and the need to defy it, Maybe Tomorrow might have had some poignancy and point; certainly both actors are fine singers.

It never gives itself time to explore the theme, though, as Julia Murray races through a series of badly-scripted cameos as Sian’s visitors, while Liz Ewing, as Sian, struggles to respond with any coherence; in a play scripted and directed by the stellar team of Brian James O’Sullivan, Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Lesley Hart, from which they should all probably learn what they can, before moving on as fast as possible.

Close is at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, until tomorrow; Maybe Tomorrow is at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until tomorrow, and at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 14-18 October.

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