When Dominic Hill took up his post as artistic director of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow following his departure from Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, big things were expected from one of Scotland's few directors who is capable of working on a truly epic scale.

The announcement today of his first full season of work, as exclusively revealed by The Herald, confirms the sense of expectation Hill’s appointment shook up, and the scale of his own ambitions for the Citz.

Even by themselves, the presence of a play by Pinter, a Beckett double bill and a Shakespeare are enough cause for celebration. The fact that, not just King Lear, but both Pinter’s mid-period ménage a trois, Betrayal, and Beckett’s solo miniatures, Krapp’s Last Tape and the rarely performed Footfalls, will be directed by Hill on the theatre’s main stage rather than its two studio spaces, says much about Hill’s thinking. Betrayal, Krapp’s Last Tape and Footfalls may have small casts, but here they are being recognised as big plays on every other level, and which deserve the space to breathe only a main stage can provide.

The Citizens main stage is a curious hybrid. As a space it is more than capable of showing off panoramic spectacles, yet without ever losing a sense of connection with those seated in its auditorium. Intimately epic, is what Hill calls it.

With such all year round activity on the main stage, there will be far fewer visiting companies. The studio spaces will be given over to artists such as Roadkill director Cora Bissett to develop new work, while Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint seasons will be rehearsed at the Citz.

Casting too is of major significance to Hill’s way of thinking. Two names are already in place. One is Cal MacAninch, who will appear in Betrayal. MacAninch may be a well known TV name these days, but his acting career began at the Citz during the theatre’s glory days under the directing triumvirate of Giles Havergal, Robert David MacDonald and Philip Prowse. Prowse in particular showcased the Govan-born actor’s talents, casting him in Tis Pity She’s A Whore, Frankenstein, A Tale of Two Cities and Enrico IV.

The second and even more significant casting is that of David Hayman, who will play Lear. Hayman too is familiar from TV roles such as Lynda La Plante’s Trial and Retribution, but he was a key figure at the Citz in the 1970s, when he played in some of the theatre’s defining shows.

Most startling of these was the title role in Hamlet in a radical 1970 production of the play that caused a furore. Almost a decade later, Hayman courted controversy again with another Shakespeare, when he played Lady Macbeth.

The symbolism of Hayman’s return to the Citizens cannot be understated. For Hayman, it’s clearly a special moment.

“When I was in the theatre the other day,” he said, “I managed to find a quiet moment, and I went onstage and looked out at that auditorium, and I came out head to toe in goosebumps. When Dominic first asked me to do Lear, I emailed him back straight away and said that I had a very large smile on my face. It feels like coming home to the place where I started out, and which is still a very special theatre, both in Glasgow and in the world.”

Hayman was a key component of Hill’s plans from the off.

“I wanted as quickly as possible to say that we’ll put on great, important plays, but I also thought it would be amazing to get David Hayman to play Lear, and I’m thrilled we’ve managed to make that happen. David started here, and now he’s come full circle with us. That feels right in terms of not denying our past, but celebrating it, and using it to go forward. King Lear is also one of the greatest plays ever written, but it’s hardly ever done here, and I don’t know why.”

It may be an accident, but all three main stage plays deal with the consequences of the past on their chief protagonists. Hill describes Betrayal as “beautiful and raw. On one level it’s a very intimate play, but on another it’s huge.”

Of Beckett’s work, Hill says he prefers the writer’s smaller plays. “Footfalls is like this art installation or something, and it’s right it should be seen on a big stage. That’s my priority at the moment, to re-establish our identity as a place for great theatre from the classical repertoire on a big stage. There’s a danger of losing that identity if you have too much work on. Also, with all the trend for mixed-media and non-text based theatre, there’s a danger of the great plays getting lost as well.”

While this will be Hill’s first full season since his arrival, he did programme the Citz’s most recent main house production, A Day In The Death of Joe Egg. While directing duties for Peter Nichols’s play were passed over to Phillip Breen, who previously directed Pinter’s The Caretaker at the Citz, its scheduling nevertheless made its own statement about Hill’s ambitions.

Here was a taboo-busting play, after all, that received its world premiere at the Citizens in 1967 after being rejected by almost every theatre in the country. Michael Blakemore’s production of Joe Egg transferred to the West End and Broadway before being made into a feature film starring Alan Bates and Janet Suzman.

Breen’s confident revival featured a cast that included stand-up comedian Miles Jupp and a cameo by Miriam Margolyes. On the opening night, Nichols himself made an appearance for a post-show discussion with the audience. Here was a theatre, Hill seemed to be suggesting, that can not only get lesser-spotted contemporary classics on a main stage. It can also get famous faces to perform alongside more leftfield cast members. It can even get major writers to talk about their own experience of their work being performed both then and now.

“It felt like a good bridge,” Hill says of his calling card. “It says that we are about doing classic plays, but contemporary classics as well. It was saying that we’re a hugely important theatre, and that we can attract the best artists in the UK. That’s absolutely what I want us to be, and I think we have the opportunity to be. I’ve only been here six weeks, but the kind of warmth and loyalty and devotion that this theatre engenders in people is kind of extraordinary, and I think we have to use that. There’s a fantastic wealth of connections this theatre has that I think we can use in the future.”

If Hayman can be taken as a barometer of the sort of connection Hill is talking about, then the feeling would appear to be mutual. As Hayman says: “Dominic is a very gifted director who has a vision. He wants to put the Citz on the international map again, the way it was in those wonderful heady days when I was here before. Not as a museum, but as a new version of the glory days. It’s all very exciting, and I’m looking forward to a long and fruitful relationship with the new Citizens.”

Tickets for the Citizens Theatre’s spring 2012 season go on sale on November 29. Visit www.citz.co.uk.