History: Artistic Directors - Clive Perry 1966-75
Tom Fleming, in his year as Artistic Director, had brought to the Lyceum an exciting vision of ‘Total Theatre’, and he further explained his aims to develop the Lyceum into a theatre of national significance, ‘with a brave and restless policy and artistic standards that bear comparison with those in other European capitals’. These resonant words have informed the ethos and fuelled the ambitions of the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company for the past forty years.
Clive Perry, who came from Leicester’s Phoenix Theatre to succeed Tom Fleming, followed and developed these demanding precepts and inaugurated one of the most successful periods, not only in the history of the Lyceum, but also in the renaissance of Scottish drama in the 20 th century.
One of Clive Perry’s first initiatives was to close off the Gallery, reducing the theatre capacity from 1650 seats to the more manageable 770, at the same time creating a more intimate and effective theatre space for both audience and actors. He also reduced seat prices, making the theatre more accessible to a wider audience. He gave serious thought to the sort of plays that would attract this new audience. In an interview he said:
“Theatre is not a pure art. It is the art of compromise in many ways. You can only produce what the public want, and not force undesirable commodities down their throats.”
Clive Perry soon established the financial security needed to create a stable yet innovative environment to maintain and develop the highest artistic standards. He also appointed two outstandingly talented Artistic Directors to assist him in producing the ‘brave and restless policy’. With Richard Eyre, Clive Perry established a creative relationship which lasted seven years until 1972 when Richard Eyre left the Lyceum to become Artistic Director at Nottingham Playhouse and later at the National Theatre in London.
In this short space we can only give a brief account of Richard Eyre’s contribution to this theatre. In his first year alone he directed a wide range of drama including Chekhov’s The Seagull; O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, MacLellan’s adaptation of Moliere’s The Hypocrite, David Halliwell’s Little Malcolm and his Struggle against the Eunuchs, Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun by John McGrath and his own adaptation of Jennifer Dawson’s award-winning novel The Ha-Ha. In his first Christmas he directed Russell Hunter as Long John Silver in Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
In 1970, which Clive Perry was appointed Director of Edinburgh Theatres, which gave him responsibility for the King’s as well as the Lyceum, Richard Eyre became Director of Productions at the Lyceum. He continued to produce plays from the world’s repertory and to support new work, and he became especially famous for his productions of the plays of Anton Chekhov. Eyre became most memorably remembered for his interpretation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, prompting Allen Wright of The Scotsman to suggest that the Edinburgh International Festival should mount a Chekhov season, and to engage Richard Eyre to produce and direct it.
In addition to his highly acclaimed productions, Richard Eyre also opened up the Lyceum to events such as drama conferences, talks and poetry readings (activities which continue today), making a valuable contribution to the life of the Lyceum Theatre. Building on the Youth Policy of Tom Fleming’s Rumplestiltskin in 1965, Eyre encouraged the formation of the Young Playgoers Club, which can be seen as a forerunner to the present-day Lyceum Youth Theatre, which brings so much credit to the work of the Lyceum Education Department today. Richard Eyre made an invaluable contribution to the work and high standing of the Royal Lyceum securing its position as one of the most important producing companies in Scotland, the UK and beyond.
Clive Perry was also forward-looking and an innovator. He planned to have one day, in addition to the main theatre, a smaller theatre where plays of a controversial nature, thought to be too risky for the main house programme, might be performed. He never got the second auditorium that he wanted, but he lent his unqualified support to the creation of the Young Lyceum Company, who finally and by dint of their own hard work, took over the old Festival booking office in Cambridge Street (the site of the present-day Traverse) and transformed it into an exciting studio theatre with 200 seats.
One of the main forces behind this particular project was Ian (now Kenny) Ireland. Under the vitally creative and inspired leadership of its three directors, the Young Lyceum Company attracted the brightest of the emerging talents in Scottish Theatre, including John Bett, Bill Paterson, Muriel Romanes and choreographer Pat Lovett. Beckett’s Endgame and Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound were early productions and on the Fringe in 1973, an open air and modern version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed. But for all its success, the Young Lyceum project was too expensive and Clive Perry reluctantly had to close the company.
The most significant event, and commercially successful play in Clive Perry’s tenure was the production in 1968 of an adaptation of Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. This was one of the most important productions in the history of the Lyceum Theatre. For a long time neither Clive Perry nor Richard Eyre, as Englishmen, had felt fully qualified to either judge Scottish writing or to produce and direct Scottish plays. However, the record-breaking box office returns and the enthusiastic audience response to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie convinced them both of this serious lack in the Lyceum repertoire.
Perry then made the most important decision of his nine years at the Lyceum. In 1971 he appointed the Scottish playwright and director Bill Bryden as his Associate Director, especially to produce Scottish plays. The impact Bill Bryden made on Scottish drama in the 20 th century cannot be over-emphasised. He gathered about him a company of the highest quality including Rikki Fulton, Eileen McCallum, Fulton Mackay, Roddy MacMillan and Clare Richard. Inspired by Stewart Conn’s ground-breaking play The Burning, Bryden called for the writing of new Scottish plays. He encouraged Roddy MacMillan to write The Bevellers, revived Robert MacLellan’s The Flooers O’ Edinburgh and as an author made a most significant contribution himself. Willie Rough not only revolutionised Scottish drama in the 1970s, it gave confidence to a whole new generation of young Scottish playwrights. As Ian Brown’s researches have shown and as Randall Stevenson and Gavin Wallace’s Scottish Theatre since the Seventies and Bill Findlay’s anthology Scots Plays of the Seventies have attested, the decade of the 70s saw the greatest outpouring of Scottish dramatic writing, in a variety of tongues, that Scotland has ever known.
In 1975 Clive Perry was appointed Artistic Director of the Birmingham Rep and Bill Bryden became Associate Director at the National Theatre. In the 1970s under the stewardship of Clive Perry and his Associate Directors, Richard Eyre and Bill Bryden, the Royal Lyceum Theatre was the crucible in which revolution and high achievement of Scottish drama in the 20 th century was forged.
Mike Ridings 2005