This is an abstract from what he wrote. The whole report is available
for download from the national Theatre website here.
I suppose the ultimate expression of mixed emotions in our language
occurs when Shakespeare tells us in King Lear that Gloucester’s
heart “burst smilingly”. Reporting on my last year in the
most exhilarating and most gruelling theatre job imaginable seems
to require, if not the same phrase, at least a similar insight if
I am to capture the profound sadness and the joyous relief commingled
in my farewells to the National.
The euphoric experience of my final year, in which the National
broke its own record by collecting ten Olivier Awards (to bring the
five-year total of Oliviers to forty-three!), the triumphant experiment
of the Transformation season, and the continuous house full notices
outside the Stoppard Trilogy performances, Streetcar, Anything
Goes and Love’s
Labour’s Lost all contributed to a perceptible spring
in my step; the absence of planning work in my schedule and the knowledge
that this was being brilliantly undertaken by my younger and absolutely
match-fit successor Nicholas Hytner, shed years in my sense of well-being
and gained pounds in my appearance.
I believe in calm hindsight that the National undertook changes in
2002/03 that will be seen as having a fulcrum significance for the
future.
During the year we reconfigured the Lyttelton, made a new small intimate
theatre called the Loft, and totally changed our pricing to make theatre
available to a broader based and younger audience in addition to our
long term supporters. The average age of our audiences was almost
as reduced as the ticket price, since nearly 50% of the customers
for the new season were under thirty-five. But I want to be clear
about this ‘pricing’ issue. Ticket price reduction of this
dramatic kind is not possible without large scale sponsorship and
certain arts journalists who persist in proclaiming that ‘give-away’
prices are the only hope the theatre has for survival are playing
a misleading and dangerous game. The only way without sponsorship
that prices can be cut is by theatres doing very small cast plays,
with cheap designs, and by heavily reducing the wages of actors, technicians
and theatre workers generally. This amounts to a recipe for disaster
for theatre in this country, where already ticket prices are only
half what they are in America.
The Transformation project was the triumphant achievement of my two
young associates, Mick Gordon and Joe Smith, served indefatigably
by Sarah Nicholson, and it was a many layered achievement. Working
practices can all too easily become habitual, and self-perpetuating,
even among enlightened people; but in addition to the artistic triumph
of bringing us thirteen world or national premieres in five months,
Transformation transformed countless ‘old ways’ of working
into ‘new ways’, greater democracy flourished, and greater
collective ownership resulted. The last night party (fireworks and
streamers again) of Transformation climaxed with hundreds of the National
team in a tearful mixture of understanding and regret that the experiment
couldn’t go on… and on and on; but though it was over, we
all knew that the National had changed for good.
The ‘fundamentals’, as far as I am concerned, have always
included the creation, whenever possible, of ensemble conditions,
particularly to present themed or connected work. During this year,
no less than three ensembles came together to produce work that I
believe could be achieved no other way. Max Stafford-Clark returned
to the National to present, with us and Out of Joint, an ensemble
in a new production of Goldsmith’s masterpiece, She
Stoops to Conquer, and a new play by April De Angelis, about
Garrick’s first production of that masterpiece, called, with
suitable prophetic irony, A
Laughing Matter.
Then two ensembles came together under my personal wing. The first
was for my productions of Tom Stoppard’s three linked but structurally
separate plays Voyage,
Shipwreck and Salvage.
For that company and for myself, the experience of being in the rehearsal
room every day for three months with one of the great writers of our
age was as glorious as it has become indelible. We not only had his
by turns hilarious and penetrating comment on our work and exposition
of the material, but also the experience of observing him shaping,
editing and refining his mighty enterprise before our very eyes, each
and every one of us roughing out the chapter in our forthcoming memoirs
that those happiest of days would certainly become. I am unshakeable
in my belief that this Trilogy will be known as one of this unique
writer’s greatest achievements.
The second ensemble was in pursuit of the most daring and provocative
project I can remember undertaking: the attempt to have one company
performing both a legendary musical and a major complex Shakespeare,
in repertoire. I am unashamedly proud of this group of artists, whose
phenomenal skill, range, dedication and stamina, triumphed so signally
in both Anything Goes by the great 1930s wit Cole Porter, and
Love’s Labour’s Lost, by the emergent 1590s wit
William Shakespeare.
It seemed for several months that Anything Goes, more or less
universally dubbed by the press as the hottest ticket in town, would
have no place to go after its season at the National, but happily,
as I write, the continuation of the show with substantially the same
brilliant company, has been secured. Alas, the other string to their
bow cannot be part of this arrangement, so future audiences will see
only half of the company’s repertoire; but may we hope never
again to be afflicted by the critical shibboleth that musical theatre
is somehow a less demanding and less worthy form of dramatic life?
By definition, theatre both creates and responds to the fashion.
The National must be in the vanguard of new thinking while at the
same time preserving the traditions and the standards to uphold which
the company came into being. I believe utterly in the National as
we have known it, and I equally believe the National must change.
I am proud and happy to have led the National to a place where change
became and will continue to be possible. I lay down my pen at the
conclusion of my last annual report (one more than I intended to make),
pleasurably content that this voyage ended not too far distant from
its intended destination.
