The Citizens Theatre, known locally as the Citz, is a major producing theatre in the Gorbals area of Glasgow.
Built in 1878 as Her Majesty's Theatre and designed by James Sellars, then later renamed the Royal Princess's Theatre, the venue gained its current name in 1945 when the Citizens Theatre Company relocated there.
The Category B listed building consists of its original 650-seat sandstone Victorian auditorium at its core, surrounded by a modern three-storey building that includes a studio theatre, and multiple rehearsal and community spaces. The auditorium retains its original understage machinery and paint frame, the oldest in a working theatre in the United Kingdom. The building re-opened after a seven-year refurbishment in August 2025.
The theatre is the main producing theatre for the West of Scotland, employing 120 staff.
Producing theatre
The Citizens Theatre is the west of Scotland's major producing theatre. Approximately 30 members of staff work backstage during the run up to a production, in addition to which up to 12 actors for a main auditorium production and a director may be rehearsing in one of the theatre's three rehearsal rooms. The production team includes stage management, lighting, sound, workshop, wardrobe and technicians. Costumes, sets, lighting and sound are prepared by the Citizens' backstage crew and the company produces several shows each year in the main auditorium, studio spaces and for touring.
The Citizens Theatre is the only theatre in Scotland still to have the original Victorian machinery under the stage and the original Victorian paint frame is still used today to paint the backcloths for shows. Welding, carpentry, sewing, painting and papier-mâché may be used to create sets for productions.
Recently, Christmas shows have been fairy tales adapted by Alan McHugh and presented in highly theatrical productions offered as an alternative to pantomime.
Community work
The Citizens YOUNG Co. launched in 2005. The company is drawn from young people in Glasgow and across the West of Scotland. No prior experience is required. Participants work on professional productions performed as part of the Citizens Theatre Season. YOUNG Co. members may study writing, performing, design or stage management and have the opportunity to work with theatre professionals.
The Citizens Theatre runs a programme of workshops and drama classes for children and young people.
History "The Citizens Theatre is probably more important as part of Britain's heritage than perhaps many imagined. It is Britain's oldest fully functioning professional theatre which retains the greater part of the historic auditorium and stage... This leaves the Grand Theatre, Leeds which opened six weeks before the Citizens (née Her Majesty's) but which had all its stage machinery destroyed 30 years ago. The Citizens is thus a British national treasure."- Iain MacIntosh, Theatre Specialist, November 2007. Early history The theatre was built in 1878 (as Her Majesty's Theatre and Royal Opera House) and designed by leading architect James Sellars. It was one of 18 theatres built in Glasgow between 1862 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914 (during the same period seven were built in Edinburgh). It was the first theatre opened on the south side of Glasgow. Eventually, there were four theatres built in the south side: The Palace, next door to the new theatre (now demolished), The Princess's Royal (formerly Her Majesty's, and now the Citizens), the Coliseum in Laurieston (now demolished), and the Lyceum in Govan. The remaining theatres built in this period still operating in Glasgow are the Pavilion Theatre, the King's Theatre, the Theatre Royal and the Citizens Theatre.
The theatre was built and owned by John Morrison, as part of his development of tenements close to Gorbals Cross, when the city was becoming the Second City of Empire. As Her Majesty's Theatre and Royal Opera House, he leased it to James F McFadyen, who had studied at Glasgow University and then became a lessee of theatres in England.Glasgow Herald December 1878 The theatre seated 2,500, and presented plays, revues and pantomimes. Reflecting the quality of Morrison's work the new building was very safety conscious, substantially built; with fire hydrants on each level and on stage. The stairways were extremely wide and the lobbies spacious. Morrison commissioned sculptor John Mossman to create the six statues which adorned the roof line, above the classical columns of the facade. In December 1879, the lease changed to H Cecil Beryl who changed the name to the long running title of Royal Princess's Theatre.Glasgow Herald December 1879 For over twenty years the pantomimes staged by Beryl were written by Fred Locke. After seven years Beryl assumed a business partner Rich Waldon (a writer and producer of pantomimes) who would soon take over and buy the theatre from the builder.Era dated 7 December 1907
By 1914, Rich Waldon was the busiest theatre operator with five theatres in the city – the Royal Princess's, the Palace, the Lyceum in Govan, the Pavilion and the West End Playhouse/Empress On his death in 1922 he bequeathed the Royal Princess's to his deputy Harry McKelvie, who as a boy had started as a bill poster for him and now was the mastermind behind each year's longest running pantomime in the United Kingdom. 1923 saw a major modernisation of the auditorium which was now fully carpeted and the walls finished in wood panelling.ERA 17 October 1923 When Harry McKelvie let it be known he was retiring in 1944 he offered a generous ten-year lease to the new Citizens Company, who took it up and moved from the Athenaeum Theatre in Buchanan Street. The Citizens Theatre Company was formed in 1943 by a group of theatre-minded men led by Dr Tom Honeyman and James Bridie, one of Britain's leading playwrights. The name of the new company was taken from the manifesto of 1909 of Alfred Wareing's newly formed Scottish Playgoers Co Ltd for their repertory company, which was to provide live theatre for the citizens of Glasgow, staging new Scottish and international drama, opening at the Royalty Theatre. The 1909 manifesto of the Glasgow Repertory Theatre expressed these tenets: "The Repertory Theatre is Glasgow's own theatre. It is a citizens' theatre in the fullest sense of the term. Established to make Glasgow independent from London for its dramatic supplies, it produces plays which the Glasgow playgoers would otherwise not have the opportunity of seeing." Originally based at the Athenaeum Theatre Bridie's Citizens Company relocated to the Royal Princess's Theatre in the Gorbals in 1945 at the invitation of Harry McKelvie, "The Pantomime King". Bridie renamed it the Citizens Theatre and the Citizens Company opened there on 11 September 1945. In 1946 Harry McKelvie died, his funeral being held in the theatre. At the end of the lease in 1955 Glasgow Corporation bought the theatre and leased it to the Citizens company. Bridie, was a popular playwright and theatre persona, who helped the Citizens to become popular and a wide selection of productions were staged in its first 25 years.
Innovation and growth From inception, the Citizens Theatre company was a full-time professional company. The first managing director was novelist Guy McCrone, assisted by his wife; soon after that the post was held by George Singleton. One of the first business managers was Winifred Savile, formerly producer and manageress of Perth Theatre. By coincidence, her uncle, H. Cecil Beryl was lessee of the Royal Princess's Theatre from 1879 to 1887.The Citizens' Theatre 21st Anniversary Conspectus, published in 1964 The board of directors included R.W.Greig, chairman of the Scottish National Orchestra, Norman Duthie, chartered accountant, and Sir John Boyd, lawyer. Playwrights in the Citizens in its first year were: JB Priestley, Robert McLellan, Paul Vincent Carroll, James Bridie, Patrick Griffin, John Wilson, J.M. Barrie, Peter Ustinov, Robert Kemp, Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham, Anna LLouise Romoff, Gordon Daviot, Robins Millar, Gordon Bottomley and Moray McLaren. Seven of the productions were premieres. In its first 21 years the Citizens presented nearly 300 plays, of which 72 were British or world premieres.
Production and art directors from 1943 to 1964 included Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Alastair Sim, Fulton Mackay, Iain Cuthbertson and Albert Finney. Michael Blakemore was especially associated with the company, first working there as an actor in 1966–67, where his parts included George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Maitland in Inadmissible Evidence. In the 1960s Glasgow Corporation decided to plan the construction of a new theatre and concert hall in the city centre. This eventually emerged in the late 1980s as the Glasgow International Concert Hall, at the top of Buchanan Street, but without the envisaged theatre. The Citizens remained in its Gorbals site.
During the period from the 1970s to the 1990s, the Citizens was associated with innovative play selections and stagings by Giles Havergal, Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald. The three were responsible for the Citizens Theatre being again recognised as one of the leading theatres in Britain. Havergal's production of Travels with My Aunt adapted from the Graham Greene novel of the same title, was first presented in Glasgow in 1989 and then played in the West End where it won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1993, and off Broadway in 1995. His production of his and Robert David Macdonald's adaptation of Death in Venice by Thomas Mann was first presented in Glasgow in 2000. Since 1970, Prose was a co-director of the Citizens Company with Havergal and Robert David MacDonald. In 2003 both Havergal and MacDonald stepped down from their posts as directors of the company. Prowse however, continued his role as artistic collaborator with newly appointed artistic director, Jeremy Raison, until 2004. He directed and designed over 70 plays with the Citizens Theatre and has worked throughout the world designing and directing for opera, ballet and drama. Macdonald became a co-director of the Citizens Company with Havergal and Prowse in 1971. Macdonalad wrote and adapted fourteen plays for the company: Dracula (1972); Camille (1974); De Sade Show (1975); Chinchilla (1977); No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1978); Summit Conference (1978); A Waste of Time (1980); Don Juan (1980); Webster (1983); Anna Karenina (1987); Conundrum (1992); In Quest of Conscience (1994); Persons Unknown (1995); The Ice House (1998), Britannicus (2002), Cheri (2003) and Snow White (2003). Macdonald played leading roles in more than twenty productions and directed fifty productions including ten British or world premieres with the company. Macdonald died in 2004.
During the 1970s the Citizens started to attract controversy with its productions and advertising. In December 1970 city councillors called for an end to the £12,000 annual grant the Glasgow Corporation gave to the theatre after it was announced that anyone presenting a trade union card on 8 December would be granted free entry to the theatre. The Evening Times reported "The free tickets were suggested as a gesture of the actors' solidarity with the trade unionists' strike protest against the Industrial Relations Bill" (Evening Times, 7 December 1970). This was the first of many altercations between the theatre and the city council throughout the decade.