The Lyceum at 50: A Theatre Celebration
Mark Thomson of The Royal Lyceum Theatre talks 50th Anniversaries, trying new foods, Waiting for Godot and the danger of funding cuts ahead of his final season with the theatre
“It’s kind of like the perfect ending to a marriage,” says Mark Thomson on his final season as artistic director of The Royal Lyceum Theatre, also its 50th anniversary year. “We love each other a great deal but now it’s time to find different partners. It’s very positive for both because arts institutions need change, they need to be rethought. What I tried to do here for 12 years was to reinvent it every year to a degree, so that you have a restless surprise that’s constantly keeping the audiences and the artists on their toes, experiencing new things, or experiencing old things in ways they hadn’t imagined.”
It is clear talking to Thomson that creativity and a real passion for making theatre have driven him throughout his time at the Lyceum, and drive him still. It is also clear that his brain never stops moving as he lays out his purpose in making art: “Keep people thinking, keep people celebrating being in the theatre, not doing it because they think they ought to culturally or because it’s the thing to do, but to reward people with something that makes a mark on them. It’s life-affirming, it raises spirits. That’s legitimate and it’s not easy.”
It is certainly not easy, but looking to the season ahead, Thomson has curated some amazing events, from Waiting for Godot to an adaption of Sarah Walters’ novel Tipping the Velvet. There is a strong balance between the old classics, well-loved and well-worn, and new contemporary work that Thomson calls “vital.”
“Here’s the reason why I think it’s important, it’s two-fold. If you just keep giving people what they’ve always had, if you put the same food in front of them all the time, eventually the joy of eating will start to diminish. World premieres: when you walk in, no one knows what it is. The theatre has a surprise, they’ve put a new food on the table that no one’s tasted before.”
“The second thing is this: I think it’s very important that contemporary voices exist in a contemporary theatre and I think it’s important that they’re on the mid-scale. A great fear of mine is that new writing becomes associated with corners of theatre rooms in wonderful basements and small auditoriums. Think about the great writers, they wanted to speak to a lot of people. I wanted to create a place where contemporary writers with an appetite to talk to a large number of people could come and express themselves. It’s critical that theatre culture isn’t to become esoteric, only for the few. I needed writers with the generosity and desire to talk at midscale, to keep theatre a culture that is popular and is for anybody. I don’t mean commercial, although if commercial means lots of people come, jolly good.”
The idea of theatre as food, as sustenance, is something that Thomson returns to as he discusses its cultural importance, and the conversation comes around to funding and to cuts. “I have a slight concern that funding bodies are losing sight of how key and important producing theatres is,” he says in response to what he thinks the Lyceum may be doing in another 50 years. “We’ve got a terrific Minister for Culture in Fiona Hyslop who’s a great champion, but that has to find its way into the fact that for the past eight years we’ve been on standstill with funding, and the costs go up so we’ve fallen behind about 25%, and we’d be told, ‘At least you haven’t been cut,’ and now we are cut another 17%. We have to make sure that that goodwill and affirmation of culture at that political level doesn’t mean that in ten years time the Lyceum will be in so little money that the imagination of its programming will be restricted.”
“I’m not just talking about the Lyceum. I’m talking about the Citizens, the Traverse, Dundee. They’re all companies that have been told for years to effectively do the same with less and that’s a little bit exhausting after a while. It certainly doesn’t make you feel special because the truth is this: it costs money to do and the people need money to do it.”
"Keep people thinking, keep people celebrating being in the theatre" – Mark Thomson
Thomson’s worry for theatre, and for the arts in general, is the attitude that funding can and should go to areas which create more obvious and immediate improvement to life. “It’s a very difficult thing to stake a claim against, say, the NHS. That’s where people get it wrong. If you took that view you would have no arts, because of course you should be keeping people alive, but why are you keeping people alive? You’re keeping people alive to enjoy their lives, to have something that is special and beautiful and raises spirits. Makes you smile and makes you think. We’re a civilised and intelligent race of things and these things need to have things to do to keep them alive.” Again it is the idea that theatre and performance is more than simply entertainment, but it is cultural sustenance, something that people need to enrich their lives – to introduce them to new foods, as Thomson puts it.
“The one consistent thing that I’m most proud of is that I’ve never put work on just because I thought I need to earn a lot of money for this so I can do the rest. That doesn’t mean I don’t balance, I make sure there are plays that will gather an audience. The challenge then becomes trying to live up to your playwrights, to the thinkers, getting inside their wisdom and finding your own way of marking it without overwhelming it with your own cleverness. The moment you think you’re more clever than Shakespeare, that’s when you diminish both him and yourself, and the audience all start booing.”
The writer that Thomson must live up to in the programme’s opening is Beckett, with Brian Cox and Bill Paterson taking on Waiting for Godot. “I worked with Brian Cox in my first season on a Chekhov. Brian is patron of the theatre, but he was also on the stage the first time the Lyceum theatre company ever took to it.” Thomson explains where the desire to produce the piece came from: “I talked to Brian and I said, ‘The idea of you and Bill Paterson doing Godot just might raise the roof of the theatre.’ It’s something that people will really want to see, two great Scottish actors who are perfect for those roles coming up, 50 years after that company began.”
It’s a great way to open a 50th anniversary, and to begin the process of a farewell, but it is funding that Thomson leaves as his final word, and a worry over the future of Scottish theatre, if it is to continue with work to the scale Thomson believes it should, and with work to the scale of his Godot.
“Take care of the building companies. It might not be the sexiest ask, but it’s fundamental. Let them go and your whole infrastructure and the economy is as damaged as it is losing The Arches. Death by a thousand cuts; that’s not a nice death, that.”
Waiting for Godot, Lyceum Theatre, 18 Sep-10 Oct, 7.30pm (2pm Weds and Sat), prices vary