Theatergoing on the Cheap in London

Wow, I knew that theatre was subsidized in England, but I hadn't heard about this scheme to bring the prices down at the National. How wonderful that they've found a way to bring in new audience members.

Apparently, the experiment has been pretty successful, judging from this article that appeared in yesterday's New York Times:

January 16, 2005
The Most Welcoming Theater in London
By BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE

LONDON ?- For Nicholas Hytner, the artistic director of the National Theater here, an inexorable law governs theatrical institutions, as unflinching as the law of gravity: "You can have a golden period," but after three, four, maybe five years, it will almost certainly be followed by "a string of disasters," he says. "And probably we'll get that."

Perhaps. But for the moment, Mr. Hytner is luxuriating in a 24-karat golden age. Twenty months and 30 productions after becoming artistic director, he has rejuvenated the National's three stages. The venerable institution - "a sea of gray heads," in the words of some critics - has become the pacemaker in the creaky old heart of London's theaterland.

In the last financial year he made a small profit, even with a slash in ticket prices, instead of the $900,000 loss that was predicted. He has filled 90 percent of the 2,300 seats, many with first-timers (as credit cards receipts attest). And he has staged new, risky work and venerable classics - from "Jerry Springer - the Opera" to Euripides' "Iphigenia at Aulis" to David Hare's "Stuff Happens," a docudrama about the Iraq war - while sometimes dazzling audiences and critics.

"Nick's put the National Theater at the very epicenter of British cultural life," says Sir Richard Eyre, who was artistic director of the National from 1988 to 1997. "He's constructed a policy that's shrewdly blended contemporary politics, populism, new plays and classics."

For another of Mr. Hytner's predecessors, Sir Peter Hall, it is the boldness of Mr. Hytner's National that is most impressive. "I was terribly proud to see something as critical of the government as 'Stuff Happens' at a government-funded theater," Sir Peter says. "And I hugely enjoyed the obscenities of 'Jerry Springer.' Imagine finding work like that at the Comédie-Française! I don't think you'd find anything so contentious at any other national theater anywhere, and I think it's the business of truly national theaters to be contentious."

Such raves did not initially greet the appointment of Mr. Hytner. Some critics were upset with the closed selection process and what appeared to be a bias toward old-school, establishment figures. "We should look beyond having yet another Cambridge English graduate running the National Theater," Sir Ian McKellen, the actor, was quoted as saying at the time in The Guardian.

Though he did study English at Cambridge, Mr. Hytner, 48, likes to point out that he does not fit the mold in other ways: he is Jewish, he is gay, his roots are in regional theater. He initially established himself at the Royal Exchange, a repertory in his native Manchester, and then made the move to London, where his work was notable for its variety. His "Magic Flute" impressed opera critics. His spectacular staging of "Miss Saigon" ran for years. His production at the National of Alan Bennett's "Madness of George III" in 1991 was a critical and popular triumph. Film offers started coming in along with other productions like "Carousel," Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" and a raunchy new play about sex, Mark Ravenhill's "Mother Clap's Molly House."

He brings that adventuresome spirit to his new post. Even before he took over the theater he wondered if its identity needed rethinking for the 21st century. After all, he asked, what did the word National mean when Britain was so much less homogeneous than it was in 1962, when the company was created? If Britain's main cultural venue was being subsidized by $30 million in government money each year, then it should surely reflect the country's changed social, racial and economic mix. Certainly it should aspire to serve many more British citizens.

"I find any kind of exclusiveness unacceptable," he says. "Come on in, all of you."

The results haven't pleased everybody. Mr. Hytner received a handful of letters objecting to the cursing in "Jerry Springer" and a few complaints from traditionalists who disliked Katie Mitchell's updating of Greek tragedy. But the National has not been picketed or its executives threatened by evangelical Christians and other protesters, as recently happened to the BBC when it showed the opera on television. And, says Mr. Hytner, the makeup of audiences visibly changed for the younger and more enthusiastic during what was a sold-out run of "Iphigenia."

Though Mr. Hytner has never run a theater or a company, his eclecticism, as well as a reputation for collaboration, have made him popular with those inside the National. "The great thing is that unlike many artistic directors, he's always in the building, always available," says Desmond Barrit, who played Vice President Dick Cheney in "Stuff Happens" and the lead in the National's revival of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." "He loves a good gossip over lunch with the actors."

Deborah Findlay, who played a brothel madam in "Molly House" and Paulina in "The Winter's Tale," says: "With him, nobody is wallpaper. Everyone is invited to contribute their views, right down to the nonspeaking parts."

When this small, pale, unpretentious man was introduced to the theater's staff as its new director, they reportedly stood and cheered.

The explanation for his success with those outside the walls of the National is more elusive. What's his formula?

Well, first off, he is quick to reject the word formula. "As soon as you think there's one, you get smug, you calcify, you go into decline," he says. "You end up like a beached whale, you're finished."

Nevertheless, he agrees that the first two works he presented - a modern-dress, antiwar production of Shakespeare's "Henry V" that resonated with warnings about Iraq and the gloriously vulgar "Jerry Springer" - were his declaration of intent. "An old play about the future, a new opera about today," he says. "High art and low art meeting in a shotgun wedding."

Press him and he says he is a pragmatist, even an opportunist, keen to ensure that his programs are diverse, enlightening, topical, artistically bold and fun. He wants the National to embrace cutting-edge theater, especially the kind that is (in Peter Brook's famous words) less "holy," more "rough," less reliant on fine words and elaborate sets, more on imaginative use of the performers' physical resources.

To encourage audiences to actually attend his new lineups, he persuaded the currency-exchange company Travelex to contribute $1.9 million toward three successive seasons of work. From spring to fall the hard-t0-fill 1,100-seat Olivier auditorium has been offering simply staged work in repertory at movie prices, mostly £10, or about $19. The hope here, Mr. Hytner says, is to "revitalize the classical tradition, put on big new plays, honor the canon, but extend it."

Equally important, Mr. Hytner says he wants to prove the value of large theaters, like the Olivier, at a time when they are considered unfriendly to straight drama: "I fear for their future, I really do."

For the 350-seat Cottesloe, also part of the National complex, Mr. Hytner schedules only new work, like three recent plays by black British dramatists, or classics so seldom performed as virtually to be new, like Marivaux's "False Servant" or Nikolai Erdman's "Mandate." He admits that he needs to do a better job of finding female playwrights, who he says account for only 15 percent of the scripts submitted.

The next Travelex season starts with Shakespeare's "Henry IV" plays, with Michael Gambon as Falstaff, as well as a stage version of "Tristan and Isolde"; Mr. Hare's adaptation of Federico García Lorca's "House of Bernarda Alba," a show from the avant-garde performance art group that mischievously calls itself DV8; and several new plays, including a first from Steven Knight, who wrote the screenplay for "Dirty Pretty Things," and an improvised piece by Mike Leigh, who recently has been hailed for his film "Vera Drake."

Twenty years ago, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, public subsidy was lower and the National encouraged to bow to market forces by raising prices. Under Tony Blair, the government has increased funding and emphasized access, which is very much in line with Mr. Hytner's thinking. "If you charge what the market will bear, you end up shrinking your market because people gradually drop away as prices rise and your core audience becomes more conservative and so does your work," he says. "We're doing the opposite, and a growing audience seems to be asking for more stimulating, adventurous and exciting work."

He doesn't just mean aesthetically exciting, like Ms. Mitchell's visually stunning "Iphigenia," or mentally stimulating, like Mr. Bennett's serious comedy about education, "The History Boys." He wants to create a buzz, with plays on current issues like "Stuff Happens" and "The Permanent Way," which deals with disaster on Britain's declining railroads, or his own two-part production of the anticlerical epic "His Dark Materials," which received mixed reviews. The Archbishop of Canterbury ended up coming to the National for a public debate with Philip Pullman, the author of the trilogy on which the play was based.

"Being 'national' should also mean exploring subjects that matter to the nation and being plugged into what's happening on the street," Mr. Hytner says. "It should mean being central to public discourse. We love it when our shows migrate off the arts pages and into the news pages. It feels great when columnists as well as critics are talking about us.

"And that's been happening a lot."

Great article - thanks bree.