"Glasgow Girls" - coming soon...

Later this week we'll be seeing the new musical from the National Theatre of Scotland, based on the group of Glasgow schoolgirls who fought a high profile campaign on the treatment of asylum seekers.  But before it opened I got the chance to pop along to a "Social Media Call" at the Citizens for a sneak peak and Q&A. We normally decline this type of invitation as we prefer to experience things as any audience member would, but this was just too interesting an opportunity to miss.  And a quick check of our archives revealed that we'd only ever said nice things about those involved in the show...

After a chat with NTS Digital Associate Eve Nicol who had kindly sent us the invite, I got to watch three scenes.  Before talking about the content, I want to say a bit about how revealing it was to see this process.  A sharp reminder that what audiences will see as fast paced, flowing pieces of theatre is the result of many hours of repetitive rehearsals and a lot of standing around waiting for other people to do their bits.   So it was quite a big ask for them to have a group of bloggers and tweeters descend on them  on the day of their first preview.  Especially as they had to run through each scene twice to let us take photos and some amateur organisation delayed things while they sorted out their sound.

Given that we'll be posting our thoughts on the full production in the next few days, it doesn't seem very sensible to comment much based on three short extracts.  But what was immediately obvious was how full of energy the show is, and how wide ranging its musical influences are.  I'm a little concerned that the combination of accents and high tempo songs made it tricky to catch the lyrics but I'm hopeful it will just take time to become accustomed to them.

Afterwards, in the Citz foyer, director Cora Bissett who is the driving force behind the show, was able to tell us how it came about and why it became a musical.  As she answered our questions we were joined by the cast who shared their thoughts on meeting the real 'Glasgow Girls' and why they expect the show to engage a London audience next year.

It all made for a very enjoyable couple of hours, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it all 'properly', but I think it will make it just that bit harder to write our post about it.  Actually, that's not true at all as I expect to be writing a wholly enthusiastic review. But it does worry me that in the unlikely event that I don't enjoy it I would find it that bit harder to write a negative review having met those involved and witnessed first hand their commitment and enthusiasm.  Actually, that's not true either.  I'd be fine writing the review - it's just that afterwards I'd feel really guilty about it.  Then again, I could always just get Waldorf to write it up...

Thanks to Eve Nicol and all at the National Theatre of Scotland, the Citizens and particularly Cora Bissett and the cast. 

We've now seen the full show and posted our thoughts on it.

Glasgow Girls runs at the Citizens until 17 November
Image by us (I'll take a camera next time if we get invited again!)