Losing the National Theatre habit

But then they do have a fabulous show on offer.

There were five other shows in the June announcement:

Trouble in Mind (December)
Our Generation (February)
Wuthering Heights (February)
The Corn is Green (April)
The Father and the Assassin (early 2022)

But no further info since then, and some of the June info has been taken down from their website, so who knows? Here's the June press release: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/sites/default/files/4th_june_-_national_theatre_2021_press_release_.pdf

Sounds like they're opening up a bit more from today.

I'm glad Small Island is coming back. I've only seen it on NT@Home - very enjoyable, but I don't think my laptop screen really did it justice.

Three points from Friday night's The Normal Heart that exemplify the regard in which this theatre holds its patrons:

1) Not even a ball-park running time was available until after the first preview the night before. Then they listed 2:40 including 20-minute interval on their website, but at the auditorium entrance it was listed as 2:25 with 25-minute interval. I clarified with staff that the ambiguous "with" meant "including". In the event, with no delays and a 24-minute interval, it ran 2:54 and we missed our booked train.

2) No tea or coffee was available during the interval. The only outlet serving these - a pop-up café on the ground floor -- had been timed to close just as the interval began. The two bars were understaffed and had long lines.

3) Exiting the Olivier along with tens of others through the front doors on level 2, and turning left for the stairs up to Waterloo Bridge, some numpty had put a barrier across the link walkway, so that everyone has to go down four flights and back up again. And in case anyone should have the temerity to move the barrier, the NT have paid for a man in hi-viz to stand guard over it, rather than have the common courtesy to let people exit this way.

There's no way the play was extended by 29 minutes between the first and second preview, so to be insisting on Friday night it would all be over in 2:25 was incompetence.

Being a preview, I'd allowed 15 minutes contingency, but not half an hour.

When I walked across Waterloo Bridge last night, the barrier and security guard were still in place. Anyone exiting that way is directed down the four flights of stairs on the side wall of the theatre. You can approach the barrier from either side. It's probably there to stop people entering at this level (although you can still do that by coming up those stairs), but no reason why the guard can't allow exits.

As of this moment, all of the NT productions have shut down till the New Year. The worst part is that they couldn’t even do a proper announcement that they cancelled Manor’s last remaining few runs.

Yikes…is the morale sinking lower? Now Hex’s NT Live is cancelled, but their other NT Live schedules are still pushing through.

That’s an issue with the commissioning model and the cliqueness of theatre. There’s no lack of incredible playwrights (especially emerging playwrights), but the major theatres just won’t engage with them, or if they do engage it’s with so many restrictions and on such exploitative financial terms that talent walks away and either goes into TV or self-produces their own work.


The NT in particular has a problem with the disconnect between the Studio and the NT proper, the huge number of development commissions they do every year, and their insistence on rushing plays onto the stage before they’re ready. It’s honestly shocking that talented emerging playwrights (who have perhaps had critically acclaimed shows at the Bush, SWP, Vault, etc.) get rejected for not coming from the right background, not being willing to play the game, writing too many characters, writing outside their marketing stereotype, all sorts of BS reasons. Yet other playwrights will have productions greenlit and scheduled before they’ve even written a word.

Unless a show is created specifically to be improvised or devised or something there’s absolutely no reason to schedule a production run without seeing a script first.

I feel a bit baffled by the NT's apparent policy on new writing.

They sometimes do some big productions of second rate plays like Julie and I'm Not Running, which I can't imagine would have seen the light of day if they'd been written by unknowns.

Others which are potentially very good plays just don't seem to get enough development and re-writing before going into production (e.g. The Welkin, Rockets and Blue Lights), which seems a disservice to audiences, writers and the NT itself. Why does that happen? Is there some prohibition on asking writers to re-write?

And there is still a blind spot that allows posh insiders to write plays about hackneyed topics like rich people's relationship problems, as though it's something fresh and innovative (e.g. Hansard, Julie - again).

I go to most of the NT's new plays, and I mostly enjoy them, but I think they could be doing a lot better, both in terms of who is commissioned, and the way those plays are developed until ready for production. On the other hand, I think the NT audience is largely white, middle-class, and probably likes to see plays about people like themselves. Perhaps they'd also happily be a bit more adventurous if given a choice, and there's also a potential for attracting a new audience.

When you look at some of the new work that's done at e.g. the Royal Court, Soho, Bush, Hampstead and some regional theatres, there seem to be a lot of promising voices which the NT could be nurturing. I wonder if those who go into TV are doing that because they're chasing better money, or just the lack of development opportunity in theatre?

I seem to recall a Yes Minister episode where the idea of closing the National Theatre buildings and turning the company into a permanent touring organisation taking theatre to the masses rather than catering for the metropolitan elite of London.

I think the idea has merit. Make it a truly national company that reflects voices and audiences from all round England (Wales and Scotland already have their own National Theatres)

Turn the building into a hub for the arts in general but the primary function of the company should become delivering great live theatre all over the country. Not cinema broadcasts. Live theatre worthy of the National brand.

It would shake up the thinking and make future ADs think more about the work and less about managing a complex of buildings.

My problem with NT under Norris is that for all his talk about diversity his range of programming is very much narrower than his predecessors. One result of this is that there’s rarely anything on of interest to me - no Jacobean or Restoration plays, very little Ibsen, Strinberg, Chekhov, Gorky or other European plays of that era, no farces, no Ayckbourn, no classic musicals - I could go on.

There has been absolutely nothing I have wanted to see there for years. I was "saved" from MANOR by Covid and recall the ABSOLUTE HELL revival being simply dreadful (that poor wordless actress circling the stage continuously was a joke). I will draw a veil over FOLLIES. It's terribly sad when I enjoyed so many past productions: THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH, GHETTO, most of David Hare's work, WIND IN THE WILLOWS - or am I just getting old?