'Nothing touches The Steamie': Tony Roper on his last time directing the iconic show

Now 85-year-old Tony Roper is to direct The Steamie for a final time on its Scotland-wide run - as he hinted at a potential remake of the TV version of the iconic story.

The 40-year-old show, produced by Glasgow company Rerr Terr, is to tour eight theatres in Scotland from August, starting at the Dundee Rep Theatre.

Roper, a former miner who shot to acting fame through iconic roles in TV shows including Scotch and Wry, Naked Video and Rab C Nesbitt, said his production of the play was usually revived around every five years. Eight years ago, the team put on a larger scale production of The Steamie - with a number of new songs and a more elaborate set including a tram car - at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow.

“I really enjoyed that,” he says. “It was a different animal altogether and it really got my juices going. I thought that would be the last time, then I was contacted by two members of the Rerr Terr team and my long-time producer to say did I fancy doing it again.

“I thought, ‘Christ, I’m 85’. But then I realised I’m a bit like [former Scotland football manager] Gordon Strachan, he’s too old to run about, but he can sit on a bench and tell people what to do.

“But that’s why I’m saying this is my last one. By the time another five years rolls around, facing reality, I’d be 90 and with the best will in the world, I’d probably be in la la land, or maybe even in another land altogether. It might be silly and I might embarrass myself if I was to go on.”

Set inside a 1950s Glasgow washhouse on Hogmanay, where characters Magrit, Dolly, Doreen and Mrs Culfeathers are tackling the final wash of the year, The Steamie features songs by David Anderson.

The latest production includes an entirely new cast - bar Louise McCarthy, who is to play Dolly, six years after appearing as Magrit in the Hydro show and who recently appeared as Heather Argyll in the National Theatre of Scotland production of Alan Cumming’s The High Life - The Musical. The other roles are played by Lesley Mackie, Eden Barrie, Ali Cleland and Paul J Corrigan.

Roper, who says he stopped acting “years ago”, will not be making any major changes to the script, despite discussions over whether any of it should be updated for a modern era, amid concerns that a younger audience would not understand words such as “wireless”.

“I’m a big believer that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he says. “But the actors will be changing, they will bring a colour to it. I really believe that you should please the audience, not anyone else and I’m very protective of that.

“Most of the terms used in the script are no longer in use for a younger person, but you can’t take that out, because it would be untrue. That’s up to the actors to explain. There is a challenge there, but not one that’s going to bother people too much.”

He says ticket sales for the show, which starts in Dundee on 27 August, are “so far absolutely through the roof” and higher than they would usually be two months out from the start of a run.

But he admits he is still “puzzled” over the play’s enduring appeal.

“When I wrote it, I had no idea if it would do well or not, so it was a very pleasant surprise when it went off the wall from the get go,” he says.

“We play to almost sell-out audiences every time. I just can’t believe that people still want to see it and in such vast audiences as it did 40 years ago. It’s taken me by surprise and it’s done so every single time.

“Other things I have written or directed have been a sell-out, they have been successful, but nothing touches The Steamie, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

He believes it is the characters’ honesty which has ensured its popularity continues.

“I think it’s because it is very truthful, I wrote about women that I knew,” he says. “It’s the truthfulness of it that still appeals to women today.

“There was no political motive in it whatsoever, I wasn’t trying to be a feminist or anything like that. I grew up with those women and they didn’t feel hard done to, they were as tough as old boots. But I did a write a very feminist play without being aware of it and it seems to have lasted through the ages.”

He also wrote the script for the 1998 STV adaptation. However, he hinted at a possible modern remake of a screen version of the show.

“That’s for the future,” he says. “Talks are in hand, but I can’t really say too much about it, not wanting to be mysterious in any way.

“The play is better than the screenplay. The television play lasts about 50 minutes with commercials, you have to cut a lot of it out. But I think if it was done again, it would still be a one-off, I don’t think it would be a series, it would be hard to make it into a series. I think it wouldn’t feel real if the same women turned up in the same [washhouse] stalls every week.

“I think it would kill it stone dead.”

Roper said The Steamie script had almost been abandoned after being turned down by multiple theatre companies shortly after he wrote it. It lay in a drawer in his house for four years before a chance conversation with actor Elaine C Smith, who he was working with on a TV show.

He says: “Elaine was working with [Glasgow theatre company] Wildcat. She got a phone call on set and she came off the phone saying they’d been offered a grant to do a play about community, but there was a quick turnaround and they didn’t have a suitable play.”

Roper told her about The Steamie.

“I said it was about a group of women in a washhouse,” he recalls. “She asked me, ‘What happens in it?’ and I said, ‘Bugger all’.

“She took it and gave it to Wildcat and they thought something could be done with it. If Elaine hadn’t got that phone call, it would still be lying in a drawer.”

He admits he is apprehensive about the final show. The play’s final performance will be at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre on 14 November.

“I’ll probably greet,” he says. “It’s been such a part of my life, I will miss it. I miss it every time we do it and I’m delighted when it comes back round again.

“It’s always been a great friend to me, I’m a very lucky boy.”