Everett wants to return to Glasgow stage after multi-million-pound revamp is complete
Screen star Rupert Everett has revealed he wants to return to perform on the stage of Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre once a multi-million pound refurbishment is complete – 40 years after making his debut there as a teenager.
During a visit to back a fundraising campaign to help pay for a £19.2 million makeover, he hinted that he would be interesting in bringing his own theatre company’s shows to the Gorbals venue.
He said: “It’s one of the most beautiful theatres in the country, it has an amazing acoustic, it is wonderful to play in and watch in. I’m always talking about it.”
Everett expressed a desire to return to the Citizens despite harbouring concerns about how the theatre world had become dominated by nationalism in recent years.
The 59-year-old actor, who claimed that Scottish theatres now only seemed interesting in staging work by Scottish writers, drew a contrast with his experiences of the “Citz,” where performed regularly between the late 1970s and the early 1990s.
Recalling how it was run under the triumvirate of Giles Havergal, Philip Prowse and Robert David Macdonald, Everett said: “At the time British theatre was very plodding, very beige and very British. Here, you came and see a completely European type of theatre. It was different to anything in the British Isles.
“You came off Gorbals Street, which was just desolate then and literally walked into an Aladdin’s Cave of visual experiences. It was magical. It was one of those experiences in a career in showbusiness that changes your direction completely.
“The people who ran the theatre had such an interesting view on life and they presented the audience with a completely international agenda. It’s one of the things that has disappeared now in Scottish theatre because it has become so nationalistic.
“It seems they only want Scottish writers, but Glasgow is an international city and Scotland is an international place.”