Two years ago, when the Citizens theatre’s artistic director Jeremy Raison took writer David Leddy on a guided tour of the building’s dilapidated hinterland, he had a mission in mind. “Wouldn’t it be great,” he asked, opening the door of an abandoned bar deep beneath the stage and revealing a dusty cavern full of broken chandeliers, “if somebody did a show in all these spaces?”
Leddy, who has put on plays in parks, botanic gardens and his high-rise home in Glasgow’s Broomhill, was powerless to resist. And now, after long and anxious negotiations about health, safety, the availability of electric sockets and whether or not the floor is strong enough to take an audience of 15, Sub Rosa is ready to open later this month. Set among the chancers and charlatans of a Victorian music hall troupe, with an evil impresario and a horrible death at its centre, the story is as chilling as a misty January night, set in a world as gothic and creepy as the broken down cellars beneath the stage.
It tells the story of Violet Carson, a 12-year-old girl who comes to work in the music hall. She is cast as half of a Siamese twin act, two girls in one dress who emerge from a candlelit basement through a trapdoor onto the stage. One night Violet’s dress catches fire and she burns to death. Sub Rosa follows Flora McIvor, her stage twin, as she avenges her best friend’s death.
It was the setting, says Leddy, that suggested the story. At 130 years old, the Citizens is the same age as many of the red velvet curtain theatres that are still open. The difference is that most buildings have had their Victorian entrails replaced with functional wardrobe departments and revenue-raising coffee bars. “The Citz,” says Leddy approvingly, “have just left it to break. They keep mending it, but everything backstage looks much more derelict than it really is. At first glance it looks like it should be condemned. Under the stage, everything is covered with hazard tape and signs saying: ‘Do not stand on this floorboard. It’s rotten.’ ”
With this cobweb-strewn netherworld to play with, Leddy knew the story needed to reflect the era of the building. Unlike much of his previous work, which is experimental, Sub Rosa draws on the Wilkie Collins tradition of strong characters and a rattling good yarn.
“My mission this time was to tell a proper story. I didn’t want to give myself the excuse of saying, ‘oh well, it’s experimentation.’ I was not allowed that get-out clause, it all had to fit together and make sense.”
Cora Bissett, a long-standing friend of Leddy’s, is taking up the long white dress and cockney accent required to play Flora, and will be attached to co-star Angela Darcy, playing Violet.
Bissett is full of admiration for the way in which Leddy has placed conventional storytelling in this extraordinary setting.
“David pushes the boundaries of form and experimentation in a lot of his work but he writes a good yarn too. He knows the rules and he’s very happy to play with them and distort and rip them up, but in this one he writes really strong characters that are great fun for an actor to get their teeth into. It’s a captivating story,” she says.
A fainter heart might have balked at spending a fortnight in the bowels of the Gorbals in her nightie. Not Bissett. Her last job was singing her own compositions while suspended above Edinburgh’s Royal Mile as part of the New Year’s Day celebrations in the capital.
“Having just flown from the top of a crane in the Mercat Cross, this wasn’t daunting at all,” she says.
The actors will be performing in cramped, musty spaces in front of a tiny audience. For Leddy, this scale is essential to deliver the desired emotional punch in the guts.
“My work is all about wanting to give people that feeling. That intimacy and communication are my starting point.”
And if that means descending a creaking staircase into an abandoned anteroom, Leddy is happy to forgo a mass audience in favour of giving a tiny group a truly visceral experience. “I just haven’t worked out how to get that emotional impact with a large-scale show.”
18th January 2009
