THEATRE director Andy Arnold – who is leaving Glasgow’s Tron Theatre after 15 successful years at the helm – is one of the most important figures to have emerged in Scottish theatre in the last 40 years. Originally from Essex, he has spent most of his life in Scotland.
Following a degree at the then recently founded University of Dundee in the 1970s, he began his career as a director and sometime actor in 1980 when he took up the nebulously titled role of “co-ordinator” at Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh (a period that forged his devotion to Hibernian Football Club).
After a brief directorial sojourn at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, Arnold returned to Scotland, founding The Arches arts centre in Glasgow in 1991. Under his leadership, that extraordinary venue (built within the old stone archways under Glasgow Central railway station) was home to the Arches Theatre Company and a thriving multi-arts programme.
These artistic ventures were subsidised by the venue’s bar and, more significantly, its famous club nights (a model that, looking back on it, Arnold says was ultimately “unsustainable”). Within seven years of his departure, with its club licence revoked, the venue closed its doors for the final time in 2015.
During Arnold’s 17 years at The Arches, audiences were treated to a superb production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (an atmospheric staging that was played in-the-round and, purposefully, in West Highland accents). There was also an evening of the short works of Samuel Beckett, and celebrated productions of plays by Harold Pinter and David Mamet.
One of Arnold’s finest Arches company productions – an unforgettable rendering of Irish writer Brian Friel’s astonishing play Translations – was staged at the Citizens Theatre in 2008, shortly before the director’s transfer to the Tron.
His move east along Argyle Street to the Trongate brought a succession of fine Tron productions, including an excoriating staging of Martin McDonagh’s bleak comedy The Lonesome West and an acclaimed presentation of David Ireland’s superb Cyprus Avenue (starring the great Scottish actor David Hayman).
There was encouragement of new talent, too. Young writer/director Eilidh Loan’s powerful and hilarious play Moorcroft (currently being toured by the National Theatre of Scotland), began its life at the Tron, as did Isobel McArthur’s award-winning, smash hit Jane Austen adaptation Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of).
Arguably Arnold’s greatest achievement, however, came in 2012 with his highly improbable world premiere of James Joyce’s supposedly “unstageable” novel Ulysses. The production boasted a scintillating script, adapted from the novel by Irish writer Dermot Bolger.
It was played by an impressive cast of Irish and Scottish actors, including, in the key role of Molly Bloom, a fabulous performance by Irish actor-director Muireann Kelly (who also happens to be Arnold’s wife).
I caught up with Arnold just as his final Tron production – Gary McNair’s Dickens-inspired Nae Expectations, starring Karen Dunbar and Gerry Mulgrew – was opening at the Glasgow theatre. Looking back over his career thus far (he is emphatically not retiring), Arnold shares my enthusiasm for his production of Ulysses.
“When I think back over all the productions, that’s probably the one I’m most proud of,” he says. Which is not to say that the Tron company went into the production full of confidence. The director remembers the Tron staff being underwhelmed when he broke the news about his Joyce premiere.
When he spoke with the theatre’s general manager about the lukewarm response, she said: “Andy, that’s our main autumn production. The audience is just going to be students and academics, isn’t it?’”
The nervousness of the Tron’s own staff did, the director admits, “put a little seed of doubt” in his mind. Nonetheless, he stuck to his guns, and was glad that he did so. The Glasgow performances were a sell-out success.
This was followed by touring to Ireland and, fascinatingly, China. The latter “opened up a new chapter” in Arnold’s career, he says.
The success of Ulysses in China led to a period in the vast, east Asian country directing Chinese actors. If Ulysses sits at the pinnacle of the director’s illustrious career, Nae Expectations runs it a “close second”, he claims.
Whether that is really his opinion, or just evidence that he remains a consummate salesman of his own productions, remains to be seen. Talking with Arnold, and having known him for 29 of his 32 years in Glasgow theatre, it’s clear his passion for live drama is undimmed. Indeed, that love of the art form explains his concern for the current situation of Scottish theatre.
Glasgow City Council’s decision, in January of this year, to strip the Tron of all municipal funding after 30 years of continuous support was “scandalous”, he says. He notes that First Minister Humza Yousaf’s recent, welcome announcement of £100 million in support for the arts over a five-year period comes after a long period of funding freezes and cuts.
The director fears that, even with that new package, the arts in Scotland will still find themselves in a considerably weaker position than they were in a decade ago. That’s certainly true of the Tron, he says.
Arnold calculates that, taking into account inflation (not least in energy prices), his theatre’s artistic budget is down by around a quarter. The Scottish arts continue to face “grim times”, he insists.
Arnold’s long period of work in Glasgow is, surely, evidence of a mutually beneficial relationship between city and director. “It’s been a labour of love”, he says of his three decades on Clydeside. It’s a relationship that he intends to continue, not least when he restages Cyprus Avenue at the Pavilion Theatre next spring.
Far from retiring, he is: “still learning my craft, even now, 100 plays later”. Nae Expectations, he adds, has been “informed” by all of the work that went before.
All of which means that, in ironic counter-distinction to McNair’s title, audiences will be arriving at the Tron with considerable expectations of another excellent Arnold production.
Nae Expectations runs at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow until November 4: tron.co.uk
