And finally... Nicholas Hytner

good evening ladies and gentlemen good evening we we have a very tight schedule we have 45 minutes to get through 12 extraordinary years a tiny little moment of context I remember being here 12 years ago with Trevor Nunn in his and finally platform and I looked up there and the door opened in silhouette was yourself standing over there and I just thought will I make it I'm here I did it so result great I'm usually the one asking the questions I guess so if things get sticky I will ask my own questions I'm just fair enough it's very enough I'd like to start if we maybe before you became director the National Theatre and you talked when we were doing an t-50 recently about your first encounter with the National Theatre in Manchester I want if you just remind us of that first encounter yeah I saw a production of The Merchant of Venice with Olivier as when I was a kid in Manchester toured I think it was doing it's out of town Ron which which you snappin in those days it was the first and only time I saw Olivier live and and I was bowled over I was at I was that age where I was where I was bowled over by most things I then saw Anthony Hopkins play Coriolanus at the Old Vic on a visit to London I think it's generally thought that the Merchant of Venice was a great production that the Coriolanus wasn't but for a teenager to see Anthony Hopkins in full flood in the flesh was pretty overwhelming it was so-so I know a lot a lot of our regular patrons go right back to 1963 I I wish I I wish I'd seen all that stuff but that's that's all I saw of the of the Olivier years and then first time you directed here was in this room it was it was a play called ghetto by Joshua Sobel Israeli writer it was a complete surprise to me that soon after Richard Eyre was appointed director of the national he he asked to meet me I'd never met him before we we had coffee in in a cafe near his house and he asked me to be an associate director of the National Theatre which was something to which I said yes absolutely immediately that that felt like the thing I wanted to do most in the world and then the next thing the next thing that happened was this new play arrived which which they were committed to doing and it was there are no funny stories about it it was an extraordinary play about an extraordinary subject about about the Yiddish theater troupe of Vilnius Lithuania which which became the ghetto theater troupe after in in in the early 40s when the Jews of Vilna Vilnius were confined to a ghetto and they kept going right up until their extermination and the play was organized around the songs that they wrote which survived the war so at the heart of the play were performances of songs and laments most of them written by and for the actors who our actors were playing and it was it was a it was not a sentimental play it was a it was a complicated play written by an Israeli addressing issues which were very difficult in Israel at the time addressing what was involved in surviving the Holocaust and arriving after the Holocaust in Israel so it was a it was a very moving and complicated play which was not by any means the first time I worked with Alex Jennings who played the SS commandant of of the ghetto but one of his many great performances and from there at the beginning of a very important collaboration with Alan Bennett Wind in the Willows and madness of Georgia third yeah after after ghetto had opened I thought it would be it would be a good and refreshing next step to do a kids show and I've later I've discovered over the last 12 years why Rich's was so thrilled when I went into his office and said do you fancy a big family show in the Olivier because the answer to that question is yes yes so yes please what have you got up your sleeve and I told him that I'd always fancied staging The Wind in the Willows which was a favorite book of mine when I was a kid that's shifted I would be less inclined now to to look at the victorian and edwardian classics although this year actually having said that we've done Treasure Island but in in a very contemporary funky adaptation and win of the Willows Richard we both of us immediately thought that the obvious person to approach was Alan whose reading of the book was already famous on Radio 4 and it is my eternal good fortune that Alan was Alan was up for it and he says himself that our working relationship began with him saying to me when I went to visit him for the first time which was three or four months after the lady in the van miss Shepard had had finally vacated on account of her she wrote she drove the van straight to heaven and and it had gone he said I don't I I don't I don't know how you're gonna do this Heather how are you gonna do a train how are you going to do a barge I said you don't worry about that I'll do that just write it and that's that is very much how we've how we worked ever since he claims to have no vision and imagination which is not true but he has left there he has trust me with the staging of his place and after the win of the Willows clerk closed not long after the winning the widows closed the Mansell Georgia third simply arrived on my doorstep and and that was the beginning of our relationship proper because that play came as so many of his plays because all of his plays do in a very unformed state not not yet found its center not yet found its focus and we have always worked together to find out what the spine of his plays what the spine of his plays is he again he claims he never knows but I think I play rights differ many playwrights are very eager to put something out there and to work we've a director with actors to find out what they've got others don't deliver until they've got it locked down but Madison Georgia third was was kind of the it was that was the beginning of of what's been gone on since really another stroke of good fortune was that I had happened to see shortly before Alan delivered the play Shadowlands which was the play about CS Lewis in which Nigel Hawthorne played CS Lewis and I'd been completely bowled over but I hadn't known that that was that kind of thing was shameful II hadn't known that that kind of thing was within Nigel's range so he felt like a very obvious place to go to and his involvement from a very early stage shaped the play because we read it at the studio I mean we did we it would be an exaggeration to say we workshop today Alan Alan is not of that generation of playwrights but we read it Nigel already had an extraordinary performance in embryo and subsequent drafts of the play for Nigel and every now and then even during the run Nigel would essentially take over there was one forgive me if you've heard this before but it's one of the favorite things that I've ever witnessed there was one for Julia moi didn't played William Pitt the Younger the prime minister and they've been doing it a very long time this happened I think on the American tour and the first scene that the king had with mr. Pitt was the routine weekly audience that the monarch has with the Prime Minister and the scene started as we were immediately led to believe it always started with the king saying married yet mr. Pitt what what and got your eye on anybody Hey no your majesty and the king what a man should marry and then they'd be a kind of paean of praise or what is in the text appear in of praise to the institution of marriage and Julian was brilliant as William Pitt utterly our imperturbable chilly and Nigel was everything as the king he was he was mischievous unpredictable superior and then furious at deeply moving of course in the middle of the play so Nigel had all the colors and Julian had the Wat and Julian played the one color puts in this scene but one night his mind wandered and Nigel went married yet mr. peas and union said yes your majesty and you just you just didn't mess with Nigel and you saw his eyes narrow and he said who - mr. Pitt whoa complete panic see Julian Julian suddenly complete something right back in the present and he went the daughter of the Duchess of Huddersfield your manners Pleakley invented branch of the aristocracy - Winton Idol said what she liked mr. Pibb which is what Nigel that's that's that's what Nigel Horton was like it was the whole thing was was blissful actually and became a film became a film yet was that was that was my first and I think so far my best film because I mean this pretty seriously I didn't know what I was doing and the direct photography with whom I've worked on virtually every film I made and read on said to me when we were looking for locations he said you only make your first film once you don't know what's impossible so ask for everything that occurs to you because soon enough you will know not to us because you'll know how impractical it is and that that is indeed what happens and there was a kind of innocence ridiculous innocence about the decisions we made on that film and I learnt everything I know about making films from Andrew dawn who shot it and tareeq anwar who edited it and they have just shot the andrew has just shot and Terry Keys in the process of editing the form of the lady in the van which we shot in the autumn and will come out in November right to move ahead nodding obviously at carousel which was another extraordinary piece of work - was though where when was the moment you had the national in your sights well I knew I definitely didn't want to do it when richard announced that he was moving on i didn't know how to do it i didn't know how to do it better I couldn't think of a or differently even I couldn't think of a different way to do it Richard ran it absolutely in Li and it was an enormous education and privileged to be his associate and the only experience I had really of running an institution as big as this was watching Richard do it I never run anything before but when he when he said he was moving on it was time to consider whether I was prepared to throw my hand into the ring and I absolutely wasn't and it it I had just made the movie and I don carousel and I I spent three or four years having an exciting time more in America than here but that was something I needed to go through I was I was New York is a fraction of the theater town that London is I mean New York is not a sensible place to make theater and it's one of the reasons why so much that is good and a lot of good stuff does come out of New York happens because those who make theater have such of such insuperable odds they've got so much stacked against them so the good stuff example the brilliant show here lies love the the David Byrne musical about northern markets that we did in the Dorfman a few months ago so phenomenally energetic and original but that's very very hard you have to be really fight to get something like that together in New York and I didn't have that kind of energy or know-how and this is a better place to make theater and movies are not for me so I got that out of my system and I always knew that that if the opportunity arose at the right time I'd want to do this and in all honesty I had got bored with myself as a director I thought there's very few of us who are so remarkable that it's worth going decade after decade just churning out the shows you need I felt that that I needed to do something else - to - to be less fixated on the gig in hand because which is what it can sometimes feel like that's why so many theater directors do branch off into movies or television or I'll probably write it's so identifying myself with this institution with its magnificent history working not on two shows a year but on 20 shows a year working with writers who I would never work with otherwise actors who I would never work with directors I would never work with it just felt like something I needed to make myself available for so did it when Trevor decided to move on it was exactly the right time and where did the incredible partnership with Nick star begin yeah you are absolutely right - to highlight that I wouldn't have applied for the job if I hadn't already worked out with Nick a planner campaign I'd met Nick here at the National Theatre he was in the press office when I did my first show ghetto richard quickly realized how much he had to offer and he became head of planning in short order and many of the systems that we still use here were invented by Nick in the 90s and I realized that I simply didn't have the skill set to do the job in its totality I have no particular managerial expertise I've got an instinct for making sure that what we do costs what it needs to cost and a nose for where the income might be but no expertise and Nick is the strategic brain and that started before I applied and I made it very clear to Chris Hogg the chairman who appointed me that I came as a job Lord the proper processes were observed when the executive director job came up and I apologized to those who applied at the same time as next one of the many things you're right was was of course the travel ex ticket scheme which is still in existence here and has spread across the cultural sector in an extraordinary way where did that incredible very simple but incredible idea well there was a kind of pessimism in the early 2000s about how feasible it was to fill this place every night and it wasn't full and it just felt one of those intuitively obvious things that it was better to be full at a considerably reduced price than two-thirds full at full price also perfectly plain that if you announced overpriced tickets and you then when they don't sell discount them the audience smells a rat and this place in any event felt like a place that needed to be available to everybody who wanted to give it a try so that was the intuition fill the place at lower prices because the Olivier in particular was really struggling and struggling even with correr let alone with big new plays which was another of the things that I talked about right from the beginning we've got to get the younger generation of playwrights excited about working on a big scale again because everything's been reduced to a black box and I've always been more interested as a director as an impresario in getting a thousand people together and a hundred people together that doesn't mean that I haven't had some of the most intense and extraordinary experiences of my life in theatres that seat 100 or 200 people what it means is I believe very strongly that there needs to be a national theater that regularly puts itself at the center of cultural discourse and maybe even discourse wider than the cultural discourse and you can't do that if you're playing - if you're playing - however however diverse your hundred year 100 people might be in many ways there's still only a hundred people it's by definition a not a public experience so filling this place filling the Littleton felt like what we were here for and making sure that people who hadn't come gave it a try felt really important so the the Travelex scheme was something we actually committed to and announced before we had a sponsor I mean the story has been told often before we thought we had another sponsor who pulled out and Travelex Lloyd Dorfman came in pretty much at the last moment by which time we'd already said we were we'd already announced the shows and we would already announced the price they were going to be sold out and it's so that if that was a that was a real communal achievement the amongst all my colleagues here the production department with whom I worked to find ways of producing more efficiently more cheaply designers and directors who signed on for the concept and our development department who found the sponsor and Nick who worked worked out how worked out how the how the money would happen how we would afford it but it's only it's a means to an end and even I have to say from the point of view of my own personal satisfaction the audience is a means to an end it's because it's it's getting excited by the work that makes the job worth doing and one of the things that that I die I say because it really is the kind of thing with if you're a member of the audience you just got to take it on trust from me that it's it's one those mysteries which I'm afraid you can never be part of the first run-through 20 times a year oh yes sometimes it's terrible sometimes it's really depressing but over the last 12 years going in time after time to a rehearsal room an 18 of those 20 I didn't direct my first run-through because I'm the director is never good enough it's always enraging infuriating I feel completely incompetent I feel it's never going to come together but some of the stuff we've done seeing it for the first time in a rehearsal room that's that's when I walk out on air it's a different kind of exhilaration you feel when it connects with an audience but the reason why it's so great that we have now so many regular patrons and so many occasional patrons who Park the place out for any number of different kinds of shows the reason why that's great is it enables us to do the different kinds of shows there are there's no writer no theatre maker no kind of show no kind of experience which we can't now take a punt on and find an audience for and the reason that's exciting is because it's exciting to do the work in that first season you had Henry the fifth they dressed as Henry the fifth it was quite it was a very strong statement of intent I felt at the time such a politically galvanized production yeah was that a deliberate statement setting out your store for your tenure here well it's as with so many of the what feel in retrospect like big bold decisions it was partly yes it was I I love doing Shakespeare I think it's an equally bold statement I have to say to kick off with every man a kind of under seeing great English play which is plainly should be the kind of thing that a theater has as its core but Henry the fifth bizarrely had never been done by the National Theatre despite the fact that was one of Olivier's most famous parts he did it long before he became director the National Theatre and it was before we've gone to war in Iraq that it was programmed and before we'd gone to war that I'd asked Adrian Lester to play Henry the fifth and when we did go to war the play as Shakespeare does just changed meaning so it would have been bizarre not to do it the way we've done it it would have been in a way more of a statement not to have done it as a play about a British Army embarking on a foreign adventure with questionable grounds and insular in international law questionable I use the word advisedly I mean the play is not the play doesn't say the play probably thinks it's saying hero king invades France for very good reasons but Shakespeare is always too multi-layered ambiguous contradictory a playwright ever to go with a single statement just felt like it felt like a pragmatic decision also a statement of intent I want to do Shakespeare and I wanted to do it in a fresh contemporary way and then and then it turned out that you know we were doing the right play at the right time another statement 2004 His Dark Materials in the air an extraordinary commitment to our work for young people and a very different view very different from Winnie although say well one of the things that happens if you are a if I mean maybe this doesn't happen to all directors or all people who run theaters but it's certainly happens with me is that as soon as something's done all I can think about is how differently I want to do things next time so a lot of the decisions I take about the work I direct and the work we program is in reaction to something that's happening at the moment we've got to that's either well that's terrible we need to get it better next time or that's good but we need to now strike out in the new direction I didn't I'd love the experience of doing one of the Willows and the thing I liked about one of the windows was the extraordinary use it made of the stage machinery here I thought it will be good to get that out and dust it down and use it again it hadn't been used for a while but mainly I thought I want to recommit to the big family show and I was noised in the direction of His Dark Materials which I which I hadn't read by the then head of the literary department Jack Bradley they felt completely impossible in the same way as warhorse felt impossible that's always a provocation and to do a big two-part epic based on these in extraordinary stories and to use the stage fully that was something I wanted to do now as soon as it opened and particularly in the years since but it was it was a great great event it to my surprise it's the first year before it even opened it sold out before it opened I hadn't rumbled how extraordinary popular those books were and I don't joke when I say that one of the things that really you asked me about it was being out in the fray and hearing teenagers furiously er bashing their parents telling them it wasn't good enough because because it missed out this and it got that wrong the parents hadn't read the books the teenagers had and the teenagers well everyone's a critic but teenagers were they were that saw them liked it I've actually I think in honesty they liked it but it really entertained them to find out what decisions we made and disagree with some of them the decision I made which in retrospect I think it was great at the time but it was scenically massive if I did it now I've seen warhorse I've seen coram boy the thing that I come out of 12 years at this place with is this fantastic education I've received from all the other directors that I've worked with and what the I said corn boy warhorse they were the shows that followed that all throughout all three shows dot materials corn boy warhorse ran two consecutive seasons here and then obviously Wars still running they were they were staged with such imagination economy wit and marched less elaborately than his dart materials so as the impresario I'm thrilled I could I'm so and thrilled at being able to be part of the process just as a kind of critical friend but as a director I'm thinking oh I'll do better next time and I hope that that's and that's one of the that's one of the things that I carry out with me I've I'm not being I'm not doing that you know gushy showbiz thing when I say that God I've that from from so many directors act as writers I've learned so much so I I I got less bored with my own work that was a that was a good being so busy working with so many other people I found my I I started to rien Dorse my own will help next up was the history boys yeah how did you cast that those young men silently well half of them were in His Dark Materials they just crossed over from His Dark Materials see to the history boys Dominic Cooper Sam Barnett Russell Tovey word in word were were big parts of His Dark Materials the rest were Toby whale was the casting director at the time he the way casting director works is they and now Wendy spawn they and the whole department they they are they know the wide spread of talented people available and they present them like a banquet to to the director and the writer I'm very often you know I've a very now I've worked we've seen so many actors here over the years I get there quite quickly but history boys they just all came in you know um any came James Corden he had the part within seven seconds I mean he was he was auditioning off around this time your relationship with deviates began and that was a really well yes I love loved working with I've loved working with companies who make theater in a completely different way to me huge always been a huge admirer of dv8 Lord newson but it was great also to work with nehi with improbable with companies who had maybe found that a natural home at somewhere like Battersea Arts Center I was introduced to Tom Morris by Nick star I mean that's a secret of our relationship is that we is that it's not that I do that and he does this it's that we both we but we both share everything and Nick's creativeness is something I rely on every bit as much as his as as his producers nurses his managerial knows he introduced me to Tom Tom became associate director and a hell of a lot of stuff which I had had a relatively distant relationship with just going to see and thinking that's good but it's not what I do I got to know better through Tom Tom took me Tom took me to all sorts of great things I mean Felix Barrett's cut my mind's blanking what's strong but Tom took me to a very early punch-drunk show in a in a warehouse in Kennington it's just not the kind of theater I make or know how to make and DVA actually was was was something it was Lloyd I just got in touch directly because I I've always followed contemporary dance brilliant brilliant for all of us that that those shows have happened here that those influences have arrived at the National Theatre they bring their own audience with them and you know there's a there's a hardcore audience at the National who would never see a deviate show if it wasn't here and maybe you know they go out thinking not for me but they've had a taste it's giving over warhorse much adieu England people NT live 2009 where did that idea well it'll being the first yeah well the Metropolitan Opera was already doing it and and so I can't claim that this was something we invented but there was a lot of skepticism some of which I shared was I I knew that we had to do this but I had a fear always that if we did it it would look like bad moviemaking or overly TV projected large and I genuinely thought as did many of the actors to begin with that the experience would be jarring horrible there's so much of a difference in category between opera and cinema that when you watch opera on a big screen you don't bring any cinematic yardsticks to bear in the way you're watching it I was afraid that you would go to the cinema watch Federer I made all look as if they were shouting and overacting and they'd look as if they were overly it and the thing which partly because the technology is so much better than it used to be partly because we had six cameras able to rehearse with the cameras able with very expert camera directors to work out very good shooting scripts but also because of something I don't quite understand it doesn't feel like going to the cinema it feels like going to the theater you know in a movie house and it's it was a something I just kept droning on about and eventually it was Lisa Berger the chief operating officer here who said this year we I'm going to find you've been talking about this often enough we're going to find the money for it and we asked David sable to do a feasibility study and that was so persuasive that we then asked him to to launch the scheme and it was a game changer and the interesting thing about the whole digital element is I think much more will happen which we kind of can't conceive of yet it did broadcasting theatre live to cinemas that felt like actually pretty obvious step I think that probably a things going to happen over the next 10 20 years which we just don't we don't have the language to talk about yet because it's not happened yet but I think it's it is going to be exciting after that came James Corden's return one man to governor's yeah again another fruitful right relationship with Richard bean yeah did you think that that had the global legs that it had no I've taught I've told this this story before I told it when it when it happened there was a very gloomy summer booking period about to be announced and there was a gap in it which I very often committed myself mentally to that slot there and waited to program it to see what the national needed I've enjoyed doing that I've enjoyed saying okay I'll do major Barbara I'll see whether I can get on with Shore you know I know I often it's I know we need a comedy and they all go and I go I go well sorry I I will I quite like doing it I love the experience of the audience collapsing I mean you know the the sing almost exciting evening I've ever spent in any theater anywhere was the first preview of the history boys when when you - oh my god this this is like rock and roll and we didn't know that so there we were with a slot it had to be comedy it had to be me and the servant of two masters was I played the cordon part when I was at school and I was also looking for something for James who was going through that trough I mean if it's now he seems unstoppable but but at that time everybody hated him and I knew I knew how giddy was so so that came as a kind of package and it came together quite quickly most mostly I'm not necessarily generating the ideas but I knew it was that play on you it was James I knew the it was going to be finding the equivalence between you know the old Italian tradition and the old English tradition between commedia dell'arte and out of the pier and I asked Richard to do it and it came together very quickly and you know all sorts of dear I said Tom Morris so who should I get to do all the physical stuff and it was Tom who's very often so oh you will yeah vikarma crystal of spy monkey whose work I'd seen you know if Cowell hadn't done all that physical stuff it wouldn't have been half as funny but it was some it wasn't that much fun to rehearse it was it wasn't that it was horrible it's just rehearsing stuff whose only purpose is to make you laugh is not a particularly grateful thing to do it's you just happy cousin after the first second third time through nobody's laughing anymore and so it feels kind of the rehearsal room feels airless and you just have to keep drilling it and keep trusting that it will be funny one day soon when it's spontaneous again when there's an audience in front of it so so the first preview of that was pretty exciting allegory drive and atom quarks London Road another extraordinary risk of a production was that a rehearsal room moment where you went oh my god no that was that came out of a studio weekend or a studio week where where the studio was inviting musicians and playwrights to a kind of marriage bureau and in one of these they happened every now and then every year or two in one of these marriage bureaus Adam and anarchy who is verbatim playwright struck up a relationship and I went to hear a sing through of the first half of it at the studio again it's just one of those things when you describe it you think no way that can't possibly work of a baton piece and alkie at the time was pretty hardcore her actors used to in in shows that I'd seen that she had created her actors wore headsets in order to reproduce exactly the speech patterns the the inflections of the witnesses that she had interviewed and the idea that that kind of thing could be set to music felt so crazy that it was certainly worth couple hours of my time was blown away by it and just said yes nuts again one of the great that's been one of the great joys just being able to say yes that's a joy that that very few theater directors directors of theaters have in this place can when it wants to just say we're going to do it doesn't matter who comes to see it it doesn't even matter whether we get anybody to see it this is plainly worth doing and that's what that's what happened there 2013 the 50th anniversary fell on your shoulders and I wonder those there was an extraordinary moment for me when we were at the Old Vic with Lady Olivier performing some Joan with you filming her it seems like incredible crossing it was it was an extraordinary that was that was one of the most moving moving things I've ever witnessed we asked Joan Plowright if she would do a speech from st. Joan we asked her not to do it live but to do it on stage at the Oviatt felt like a really good way to - one of the things that we should kick off the 50th anniversary with was something dom from the stage of the Old Vic that was a great part in 1963 and she's she has difficulty with her sight these days Joan and she came to the front of the avec stage and she she said I'm at the front am I facing the horseshoe and we said yes she said can I can I can i retake I don't really know this I might need lots of takes is that okay absolute you know that's absolutely fine it's bringing that you're here and we did one take and a camera crew who didn't really know what it was they just turned up with the cameras they were they were as tearful as I was as you were it was it was it was completely extraordinary and I think it was one of the best performances on that night it was amazing she emailed today so sorry I'm unable to be there to celebrate your great achievements NIC at the National I send my warmest wishes for an equally exciting future farewell thank you and bon voyage that's rather lovely here moving on Great Britain what a coup that was holding a performance a production completely secret in rehearsal yeah I don't I'm not sure that I would I want to do that again it was it was it was a you know when we week we showed you the tree shuddered it rescheduled it again and when we finally showed you did it felt inconceivable that that trial would drag on and we had very clear legal advice that you mustn't denounce your doing it until there's a verdict because you're being contempt of court no that's okay that's fine there'll be a verdict and and we went into rehearsal and there was no verdict and it became increasingly clear that we would be ready with it and there would be no verdict and I I think the jury I can't even remember now when the jury was sent out whether I think it hadn't even been sent out on the day I think maybe it was sent out on the day we should have been opening and then we were told oh okay three or four weeks and the nightmare was always going to be a hung jury and that was how staunch the board was there is something that I will forever be grateful for nobody on the board said no this is ridiculous shouldn't be doing this on the contrary they said this is plainly the kind of thing with a theory should be doing out now raucous be good test cartoon of a satire about the press and the police and the political establishment it was not designed to have any subtlety it was designed to be a kind of big smack round the face we had already worked out and I can say now at one point we were advised if the principals are acquitted you can't do this play they will come after you for libel but we thought about it and realized how there might be a version of the play where the the defense that was offered was built into the play as the truth and the defense was that the editor of the newspaper in question had no idea what was going on and implicitly actually more or less explicitly the defense was saying my client was either not calm or too stupid to know that this was happening so we had a version of the play where there was a very stupid editor and it's I am prepared now to reveal there was also a version it has been pulped where where the Billie Piper character became editor which she didn't in the version we we performed we had no opinion we were prepared to leave it to the jury even talking the political establishment there's an election around the corner what do you think is what's ahead for the art challenges do you know one of the things that is absolutely wonderful about today is I don't have to have an opinion anywhere I am so bored of all my opinions so no parse Angus time ok it's fine it's actually after 6 o'clock so you're no longer an employee yes that's ok I can be released yeah with that in mind you can be absolutely Frank we've got to wrap up to let Rhode Island on shortly few fewer quick things on the top you had and what of your own productions is your favorite we all cherish it would be two of us to say the history boys I'm gonna say much ado about nothing and a production by someone else the white guard as there a single performance by an actor that you will carry in your heart I'm reader FinCEN joined a great room oment in the rehearsal room that we never saw that you did I think what I remember is it was not an easy moment poor al Michael Gambon in the first actually the first week of rails of the habit of art he was he was not well didn't turn up in the second week he turned up and after about three days so we're now one and a half weeks into a six-week rehearsal period he collapsed and it was very scary he genuinely collapsed and he was stretchy died with oxygen and someone said to him as he was as he was being put into the ambulance do you want us to give a message to everybody in the rehearsal room and he said there's no need for me to send them a message they're already talking to song Russell Bale here is here is the terrible brutal unsentimental truth about the theater we were in the canteen recasting it at the time and Simon wasn't available and so sir and so dad the next day I called Richard Griffiths who had every right to say hang on a minute I did you proud in the history boys and you didn't ask me first time around why are you asking me now but Richard was not like that and I called him out of the blue and he's wife said oh how just going getting how nice to hear from you there was a long long pause and he came on the line and he said you will be interested to hear that I have come to you from my exercise bike ice I said yeah that's very interesting explain to him the situation and he said I'll start on Monday he was on Monday morning what will you miss most about not coming to the National I will miss and will always miss the fact that the company here just the just hanging around the corridors the canteen the offices there's so many people here and they are such fun to be with and I will never have that gregarious a working life on a daily basis again whatever happens it's not going to be quite like that the point about the National Theatre I think this has probably been the point for more or less every one of its 51 years it's that people really really love working here it's the most fantastic working environment and I will miss that what will you miss the least oh I'm just going to repeat I will be so happy not to have to have opinions anymore will you write a book I will try to write a book but I haven't written capped a diary I won't write a memoir I won't be writing in on April the 1st 2003 I walked through the stage door and blah blah blah so I've got to find a way of writing what feels like an interesting book about what it feels like to work in the theatre I'd like to write not too long a book that might be interesting to people who aren't that interested in the theatre but that's an absurd ambition and it won't happen immediately but but yeah it's something I've thought about and now you're no longer an employee is there a regret is there a stinker that you are oh my god of course they've been terrible stinkers and they've also been shows which have been enormous hits which I've hated and everybody else in the building has hated and one of the nice things is that when I've been to see those run throughs I have been able to report it it's not very good but it's ok everybody's going to love it and and I I don't know whether it's I've imposed my tastes on all my colleagues but by and large it hasn't happened very often maybe three or four times and I'm no way am I going to reveal what the shows are but by and large there's the the eye rolling here is pretty communal we do play a game sometimes the five worst shows of the last 12 years not going there it's been fun playing it Nick our time is done your time is done it's extraordinary and on behalf of the staff thank you so much for your leadership for the opportunities you've given us and the trustee oh goodness it's been great I want to say because I know a lot of my colleagues are out there but I want to say to them that it's been a blast but I also want to say I mean you know those of you who turn up to the platforms I know I know you are our most committed our most loyal our most perspicacious and it's been a real joy doing stuff for you these last 12 years and it's something I'm going to say again at the part of the surprise party oh my god but it's not given too many people to know that they've spent 12 of the most active years of their life doing something that was really worth doing and it's been given to me and I will always be grateful for those number of the hashtag is Thank You Nick on Twitter ladies and gentlemen I give you Nick Hytner thank you very much

Channel: National Theatre

Views: 12,179

Rating: 4.8571429 out of 5

Keywords: ntdiscovertheatre, National Theatre, NationalTheatre, theatre, theater, London, play, show, stage, drama, Nick Hytner, Nicholas Hytner, director, Directing

Id: 8N1rXAXMEYE

Length: 51min 12sec (3072 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2015