The Glasgow Citizens' Theatre
Gerrard has had an extensive association as a leading player with the renowned Scottish theatre...
The Citizen’s Theatre Glasgow is a company that accrued a renowned reputation in Britain and on the European continent as one of high design, austere beauty and a recognised intellectual fierceness, with a devotion to producing the European classics, under the leadership of the influential designer Philip Prowse, the distinguished translator & playwright Robert David Macdonald, and director Giles Havergal.
Here, McArthur played the title role in Strindberg’s The Father directed by Stewart Laing, in which his performance was hailed as ‘one of the finest male performances I have ever seen on the Scottish stage’ by Scotland’s leading theatre critic, Joyce McMillan, and the production greeted as ‘one of the finest and most compelling productions I have ever seen of a Strindberg play… brilliant, superb, absorbing, vital, stylish’, by Britain’s leading drama critic, John Peter, in London’s The Sunday Times. Among other classics here, he experienced the modern Europeans, playing Valmont in Heiner Muller’s Quartet (from the character in the Laclos novel) and the protagonist in the British premiere of Botho Strauss’ first play ‘The Hypochondriacs’. |
"The sheer intensity of Andrea Hart's and Gerrard McArthur's performances, combined with tremendous vocal and physical discipline, commands the attention... Each strikes a beautifully counterpointing balance between the mannered and the manic, formality and animal ferocity; Hart all bottled-up, spilling over fury and seething lust; McArthur quieter, more urbane, but unquestionably just as poisonous. Rarely will you witness two such complete, controlled performances." |
Later, Gerrard reunited with Stewart Laing to co-direct, Copi’s ‘The Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself’ at Tramway, Glasgow & King’s Cross Depot, with the celebrated Lucien Freud muse, the art-provocateur Leigh Bowery.
In 1996, he played Prospero in the celebrated Romanian director Silviu Purcarete’s English-speaking production of The Tempest, performing throughout Europe and Japan.
In 1996, he played Prospero in the celebrated Romanian director Silviu Purcarete’s English-speaking production of The Tempest, performing throughout Europe and Japan.