THE best that can be said is that it is an ill wind. Although the Citizens' has crammed nine shows into its autumn season after reopening following Lottery-funded backstage building work, there are no new Citizens' Theatre Company productions to be seen in the spring season.
The reasons are financial, the continuing effects of that conundrum that produced Lottery cash for buildings but not for shows. With insufficient funds for new productions, the legendary Citz good housekeeping kicked in and the theatre has instead opened its doors to visiting companies earlier than usual. Whether this would have been feasible had not other city venues, particularly the Tron, been without serviceable performing spaces (because of Lottery building work) is a moot point.
Further, the Citizens' claims that it needs an increase in funding in the new financial year before it can make any plans beyond March 31. This on the same day that a newsletter from fixed-term-funded touring company Suspect Culture hit The Herald artdesk outlining plans for the whole of 1999.
Be that as it may, the programme announced today is an intriguing mix, ranging from sure-fire hits to experiments on the fringe, and with two links back to the venue's role in the final Mayfest programme in 1997.
The main theatre's season opens on February 4 with the return to the venue of Opera on a Shoestring and a new production of Verdi's La Traviata. The company last played the Citz at that Mayfest, when Tosca was the triumph of the programme, and won the last Herald Spirit of Mayfest award to boot.
It is followed by the revival of Liz Lochhead's hit vehicle for Siobhan Redmond at the Traverse during this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Perfect Days. Fresh from a London run at the Hampstead Theatre, the show goes on from the Citizens' to Inverness, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh. In March Dundee Rep brings its production of Brecht's Mr Puntilla and His Man Matti in a new version by Peter Arnott. This has to measure up to Lee Hall's for the Almeida and the Right Size, which was the other hot ticket of the Traverse's Fringe programme.
That show is half of a swap that sees Kenny Miller's production of The Killing of Sister George play the Rep in January. The final show in the main theatre is Borderline's production in association with Musselburgh's Brunton of Bernard Farrell's Kevin's Bed, a family tragicomedy from a writer mostly associated with Dublin's Abbey Theatre.
In the studio the season begins on February 2 with another Fringe hit, Fiona Ormiston's Ruth Ellis, the fruits of the actor's lifelong obsession with a woman whose crime was arguably exceeded by its punishment. Also in February are Theatre in Action with Brian Friel's Faith Healer and the other Mayfest '97 link, Frank Miller's Cran Theatre Company reviving The Daphne Disaster, the story of the death of 124 men when the vessel capsized at its launch in 1883 and the first part of a projected Govan trilogy. March sees the Scottish premier of Phaedre's Love, an explicit reworking of the Greek tragedy by
writer-of-the-moment Sarah Kane in a production by ghostown, the company of Peter Mackie Burns, best known for his work at the Tron, and the first excursion into a theatre building since Clearance for the acclaimed Grid Iron Theatre Company, with a new show, Monumental, by the same writer, Anita Sullivan.
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