Scottish Catholic Observer

The Pavilion Theatre in the city centre had been showing comedy show ‘Rally Roon the Rangers’—a play about a group of Rangers Football Club fans trying to save their supporters club from demolition by the council.

Following reports of anti-Catholic singing at the event, Pavilion manager Iain Gordon told the SCO that bar staff were abused during the performance.

Slurs

In a video posted online from the Saturday July 27 evening showing, audience members shouted ‘f*** the Pope and the IRA’ to the tune of Tina Turner’s The Best—a song that features in the performance due to its connection with Rangers.

Contacted by the SCO, Pavilion manager Iain Gordon said: “We had shows from the Wednesday right through to the Saturday and everything was great.

“The first Saturday show was actually the best one, but at the end of the second Saturday showing they started shouting things about the Pope etc.”

He added: “This element of the West of Scotland can be very frustrating.”

Culprits

Mr Gordon said staff of the Pavilion tried to find those who shouted the slurs, but failed to identify them as there were around 1,400 people in the audience.

The theatre subsequently issued a leaflet informing attendees that ‘sectarian’ behaviour would not be tolerated.

It reads: “Last weekend, unfortunately we had a very small minority of customers who were involved in sectarian singing throughout the show and a lot of this content has made it onto social media.

“When we set out to do this production, like other football shows we do, it was important that there was no sectarian or bigoted content and we have geared the comedy and songs on what would be acceptable at a football match and hopefully we have stayed well within these parameters.”

Warnings

The leaflet adds that they understood it was ‘a very small minority’ who were involved, and that any further anti-Catholic language would create the ‘possibility that the show will be halted.’

Mr Gordon said: “We have a zero tolerance policy to this sort of thing, even the bar staff were getting called ‘fenian b*******’ for not serving them drinks quickly enough.

“The majority of the audience were really against it all though and we heard them telling the ones shouting to shut up and such.”

Future showings

Due to the bigoted language used, the Pavilion is planning on changing the script slightly for when the show airs next year in a bid to prevent further anti-Catholic slurs.

“We’ve had plays about Celtic here, too, and the last thing we would want to do is alienate people from our shows,” Mr Gordon said.