Tron Theatre’s Andy Arnold: 'For me, the Glasgow audience is the best in the whole country’

He is currently in rehearsals for the Scottish premiere of Cyprus Avenue by Northern Irish playwright Ireland. First seen at London’s Royal Court in 2016, it is a Belfast-set absurdist comedy about an Ulster unionist, Eric, who becomes convinced that his baby granddaughter is the reincarnated spirit of Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams – despite Adams being alive and well. 

As with all Ireland’s work – 2017’s Everything Between Us, 2017’s The End of Hope, 2018’s Ulster American – it has a wickedly black sense of humour. Arnold’s revival stars David Hayman – familiar from ITV drama Trial and Retribution – and opens at the Tron Theatre in early March.

“I actually wanted to stage it several years ago, as a co-production with the Lyric Theatre Belfast,” Arnold says. “But the original producers, the Abbey in Dublin and the Royal Court, were holding on to the rights. Even when we did get them, I said I wouldn’t do it unless we could get the right actor to play Eric. Then I met David and that was that.”

“It’s a brilliant play,” Arnold continues. “I’ve always been drawn to plays with a caustic, dry, absurd humour, and this has it in bucketloads.” It is not just about the laughs, though, he adds. Cyprus Avenue is about the sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland and their impact on an individual’s psychology, and it is also a metaphor for other societal divisions – in Glasgow, Britain and beyond.

“I think it really suits Glasgow,” Arnold says. “Glasgow is the closest big city in the UK to Belfast geographically, and it can connect with a lot of the same sectarian themes. But yes, it has a wider relevance, too. At heart, it is about someone struggling with the insecurity of losing their identity.”

Born in 1949, Arnold grew up in Southend and has never lost his Essex twang, despite living in Scotland for most of the past 50 years. As a child, he attended shows at Southend’s Palace Theatre, but it was not until he was 30 that he started making work himself. 

He went to the University of Dundee to study social sciences, where he hung around with former Labour MP Brian Wilson – he tells an amusing anecdote about the two of them getting into a hairy situation on a trip to Belfast in the early 1970s – then spent several years flitting between jobs, working as a cartoonist, a freelance writer, a part-time teacher, a poet – stage name Skidmark – and more. 

He was increasingly drawn to anarchic, absurdist performance and, when he landed a job at the influential Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh in 1980, he finally had a chance to put his passion into practice. He then moved to London to run the Bloomsbury Theatre in the late 1980s, but quickly wanted to return to Scotland.

“There is no cultural context for making theatre in London,” Arnold says. “You just put it on and people come. You are competing against 50 other theatres, as well. In Scotland, though, there is a cultural context to theatre. For me, the Glasgow theatre audience is the best in the whole country.”

In 1991, Arnold set up the venue for which he is still famous – the Arches. He discovered the empty railway arches underneath Glasgow Central train station and set up a theatre there. To pay for the productions, he started running club nights as well. Over the next decade-and-a-half, the Arches became a cultural cornerstone of Glasgow and was regarded as one of the world’s greatest nightclubs.

“I’ve never been very good at planning things long-term,” Arnold laughs. “It just seems to happen. I just wanted to put on some plays in the railway arches under the station. We had to pay the bills so we started running club nights. All of a sudden, we were one of the most famous nightclubs in the world. I just learned as I went along. It was brilliant. It was absolutely brilliant.”

Arnold left the Arches to take up the artistic directorship of the Tron Theatre in 2008, and the theatre-cum-nightclub closed seven years later after losing its late-night licence. “That was tragic,” Arnold says. “It should never have closed. Maybe it was for the best, though. Maybe it was right that it closed when it did. It was an extraordinary place at an extraordinary time, and it is best to stay like that in memory.”

Arnold has now been leading the Tron for 15 years, almost as long as he ran the Arches. He has overseen some extraordinary successful shows during that time, too – perhaps none more so than Isobel McArthur’s Pride and Prejudice* (*Sort Of), which premiered at the venue in 2018, toured the UK, transferred to the West End, won an Olivier award and is now touring the UK again.

He will turn 74 this year. Is retirement on his mind at all? “I won’t be running the Tron forever, that’s for sure,” he answers with a laugh. “But I could never stop making work. Never.” 

CV Andy Arnold 

Born: Southend, 1949
Training: None
Landmark productions: 
The Arches, Glasgow:
• Metropolis (1993)
• The Crucible (1995)
• Beowulf (2004)
Tron Theatre, Glasgow:
• The Drawer Boy (2008)
• That Face (2009)
• Ulysses, Tron (2012), Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2013), Chinese tour (2014)
• Ballyturk (2018)
• The Alchemist (2019)
• The Tempest (2021)

Cyprus Avenue is at Tron Theatre, Glasgow from March 2-25