National Theatre All Season Announcements

Lovely thank you! Row C for us

I staggered through this piece and was amazed. Norris seems to think that Macbeth was rubbish because it was on a large stage and that it had to be done because of the GCSE syllabus. I expect it put off a whole generation of young people from Shakespeare and the theatre. The very first comment was funny: bar staff leave at 3 am do they? Well, lots of work to do but why can’t you get a drink after a show then? Or a cup of tea? You have to go out into the bleakness of the south bank....I’m sorry but so much of this article was off the mark, off the point. Only quality counts. If it is rubbish we won’t go and word gets round very fast. It says the Arts Council wants 'relevance' but I think the even the Arts Council are taking for granted that a piece of theatre is good enough for public consumption. I started being wary when they did so much of that Hare stuff back in the day, the railways and the Bush thing. Ok, just passable but this seemed to let in a load of preaching to follow. They even managed to ruin the latest production of Translations by pushing the point to absurdity at the end. Please, NT assume some level of intelligence in your audience. We can add up, two plus two and we like to make our own conclusions. The best dramas allow for that. Many times I have felt that the NT is poking fun at its middle class, middle brow, middle aged audience, you know, the punters who have paid for their seats.. you can’t go on doing this and expect people not to look elsewhere for their theatre. The NT was always first point of call for me and my pals, now not so much. And do young people really like to be talked down to? Mr Gum was good because it was devoid of anything do goody or messages. It was fun and it was funny. The Bridge isn’t always brilliant but you can’t argue that it is simply the commercial aspect that produced those great Shakespeare’s and A German Life and other stuff I didn’t see but was told was good. If Hytner managed to do that unquestionably amazing Othello at the NT was he constrained by anything? No. I saw recently a superb production of All's Well at Jermyn Street, absolutely 'relevant'.
I’m wondering if now they will looking for plays that preach to the working class about identity and who to vote for! Mind you, in London, the plays could simply make a laughing stock of those Midland and Northern folk - irony here..
Maybe it was the writer of the article but the tone of Norris came over very whingey and hard done by. Tbh I think it is judgement that is at fault. The NT just doesn’t spot the good 'uns when offered to them and perhaps writers don’t offer anymore.

The RSC are worse. After the recent truly dismal Taming of Shrew they sent me a questionnaire which asked me whether the diverse cast had “looked like Britain”, as if somehow that was their main objective. Well, sort of, though I doubt 43% of them voted Conservative, but the production was boring and feeble and a waste of money so that wasn’t much compensation really.

Surely the bit at the beginning about them employing 4000 has to be wrong?!

If true, thats ridiculous. I think Norris should go, his time is up.

At the National's drink prices I would have thought the bar by far makes them more profit!

But yes 4000 seems reasonable given tours, transfers, short term workers etc.

I would question his Macbeth comment but other than that I don't think Norris comes off too badly here, certainly not like Hare or Duffy who seem utterly divorced from reality.

Other than that it's a very muddled piece of writing and it's attempt to link things to Brexit falls flat.

Odd that Norris seems to think it’s his decision alone as to whether he does another 5 years.

Well the quote is 'I think I probably will', the question could have been, will you apply for a second term?

One of Norris’ pressing concerns has been to diminish the hegemony of the middle class, middle age audience it was relying on and I think he’s been very successful in that, whilst still maintaining overall numbers.

The NT live broadcasts go some way to overcoming its London-centric nature but there’s still scope for change in that area.

There are a few Northern cities that could become home to a regional producing theatre run as part of the NT and that would be a great addition, Manchester is the most central and a two auditorium venue would go some way to changing the arts deficit felt up here,

The public arts thing is a good idea but with 1 region per year it is very tokenistic. The NT is not national because of its output is in Zone 1 and its not theatre as its mostly plays

He's still relying on it to fund everything else via dynamic pricing, as per his interview. 

As I am male, white, middle-aged and wealthy I'm exactly the sort of audience he doesn't want (despite the fact that he is the same) and to be fair to him he has succeeded brilliantly at this, I've been to NT three times in the last two years and two of those I wish I'd missed (his awful Macbeth and the badly-judged Mr Gum) - that's down by about 15 productions on two-year periods in the Hytner and all previous regimes - all of those at top price tickets. So, fair play to him. Some things I might be interested in (Three Sisters) is now priced so stupidly for people not qualifying for a discount that I won't be bothering. More interesting work for me is now in the non-subsidised sector (Old Vic, Globe, Orange Tree, Jermyn Street, Bridge etc.).