Peter Hall in conversation with Nicholas Hytner

I'm absolutely delighted to be able to talk to my illustrious predecessor Peter Hall who genuinely needs no introduction but I would like to say on my behalf and on behalf of all the directors not just of this theater but of most subsidized theatres most most subsidized theatres who have who have worked in their theaters since Peter was first the first director the Ross case becoming which he founded and then the director of the National Theatre who brought the company from the Old Vic to this building that we're all extremely aware that our jobs are extremely easy in comparison to the jobs that he did and that all the battles that he fought and that all the blood that spilt on the carpet as a result of the victories he had to win have made life incredibly easy for us and we have a lovely time because of what he did when he was here and when he founded the RSC so I personally I'm enormously grateful to Peter not just for his not-not-not just for the the brilliance of his career and the brilliance of his productions onto Twelfth Night was very obvious that we have a National Theatre had to mark Peters 80th birthday and that it would be a wonderful thing if to mark his 80th birthday he was able to come back and do us a production and I remember Nick Starr and I taking Peter for lunch at chi-chi's and asking him what he wanted to do and so the first question Peter is why did you want to do Twelfth Night and why did you want to do it in the cottesloe well could do it in the cottesloe because I think you could do any play in the consular and my memory of 15 years here was that I never got done until the very very end to doing any praise here because they want to be upstairs and then Olivier doing the captain's innings we can sign here yeah so I mean it's an extraordinary space for intimate detailed delicate work and I've not been here since the mid the mid century mid eighties mid eighties you know why Twelfth Night well Twelfth Night is one of my 10 favorite players this was the fourth time I was with having a go at it that I didn't tell you when we were talking I've done it three times already and it's still not right anyway this looked as if it could have a real chance in this space intimate concentrated the play I think is one of Shakespeare's most considered an extraordinary because it's absolutely full of contradictions absolutely full of them men are women women are men and then go on from there why did I want to do it well you first did it I'm really gonna spill the beans now in 1954 yeah Elizabethan theatre company was it I think so I think when you're in Oxford was it well it was Oxford it was in Oxford but we pretended it was in Cambridge what's happened what's happened to the play since then what's happened to your relationship with the play can you remember and and also the famous Stratford production with Dorothy to Turner's viola with with Shirley Lagoon as was as early as Olivier yeah how is it how is this one different from I know I don't know I can't remember yeah all all I all I know is with with revivals horrid word means get them back to life when they're dead revived anyway all I know is that if it's a revival and you spend most of your time thinking what did i do there why didn't that work why can't I get it right again it's totally against any kind of creativity so I'm always very aware of people saying what are you changing or what are you doing it's different and the answer is I don't know but you must have changed as a director I'm sure I have yeah as I hope I would have a little more disciplined yeah I hope it's all more precise did you think of yourself as an iconoclast in those days where you were when we in in the late fifties early sixties well I wasn't really supposed to have this job at Stratford you see there I remember there was quite a lot of adverse comment in the in the press they said this chap does waiting for God Oh crapola splay this before this chap does modern plays in the West End and now he's going to do Shakespeare at Stratford he went you know anything about it and there was a press campaign in some quarters saying this boy is too young and too inexperienced and yeah to inexpressive so that was the start of it I wasn't running Stratford then I was the visitor the first time the first play I did at Stratford was Love's Labour's Lost then the next year I did Cymbeline with Peggy Ashcroft and the next year is he must have been the twelfth night movement yeah at what point did was the Royal Shakespeare Company itself founded in that because you didn't sixty yeah but you you you I'd done a log yeah yes I'd done Coriolanus with Olivier museums Twelfth Night was that he said with Dorothy to him which was carried out forward when it started in 58 I think yeah we're still playing in 62 with another took another cast I think what I'm driving at is a my my impression is that when you form the RSC when you insisted on the particular approach to Shakespeare that the RSC took in its early days you were perceives to be sweeping away the cobwebs and now when you talk about Shakespeare there is a regret for something that you feel we are beginning to lose so yes if not that journey from radical to as it were preserver of the great tradition how has that come about I suppose it happens to everybody I mean I regarded myself as a fairly square operator but certainly you know well then fully started meeting young people from the fringe theatre of the day who thought it was simple rubbish it was going on on those in Stratford much too square I mean all I know about what you do in the theatre is that you better have gut reaction I'm the real desperate need to do it that sounds easy so easy of course it isn't easy but it's a it's a wonderful therapy I said to me why man why don't why am i a director why does I want to be a director I would say because when you have a good company of actors and a good play and a reasonable amount of personal time there will be a union so that a company is created who support each other even if they dislike each other and out of that can come extraordinary days of work where everybody is much better than they know they are secretly hmm that's what I like that the day you go home saying it really happened today hmm and wonder well how does it happen why does it happen well it's just exchange and it's of course the writer I don't know how when we will not know what they'll think in a hundred years time but there was a golden age it still is of writing playwrights and that's what was exciting about the RSC it was based on Shakespeare but it was you know wanting Beckett wanting Pinter wanting eight born wanting but what was it like just travelling back a little before the RSC what was it like only Waiting for Godot for the first time what did you think I thought I was mad no that's that's procedures is not really true this script was given to me I was running the Arts Theatre in great Newport Street I was 25 and I had to provide a play every month for five weeks of very little budget very small budget what was it like this this script came and I read it and I thought I didn't say to myself ah this is the play of the century this will change people's conception of what theatre really is of course not I thought if we're lucky we'll it'll get us through August and then maybe we can revive it again in September of his way so we set about doing it the actors were wonderful because they had not the least idea what was going on it was a wonderful very rotund actor called Peter bull who some of you may remember who played pot so he was really very hostile to the whole proceeding he thought he could help a few friends so he came along if I tell you that the absolute peak of his performance was it transferred the play from the arts to The Criterion where it ran for months except there was one unfortunate evening when he came on in the second act deaf and blind and the lady sitting just there said I do wish the fat one would go away and she said it very loudly indeed he spent the rest of his life thinking of possible reports but he hadn't actually got one at the time so it didn't really count anyway nogada was a miracle a miracle it changed my life absolutely completely it took me to Stratford it took me into the West End it took way to Broadway it was extraordinary and then pin set and then Pinter and then Beckett and printer both and how did you how did you know that the because the Pinter must have seemed so strange on the on madama desk it was it was it came with a letter which said dear mr. Hall I saw your play Waiting for Godot last night I wonder if you'd like to look at my latest play yours Harold Pinter I didn't know Harold Pinter was he was a jobbing actor on the road most of the time in those days I mean what he did to all of us was blow the whistle on excess he believes that less is more in the theatre and if you can get rid of it you should not do it and I think that's in terms of design staging lighting there's a lot of truth in that and there's a lot of truth in actually analyzing a shakespeare speech and saying less is more and do you think bringing us neatly back to Shakespeare but you now do less or you wished it to appear that you have done less with Shakespeare you mean I've done less with this particular speech or whatever it is it is it is it your objective to pare away and get and get down to the simple essence I mean you've said you've seen we've all seen the kind of Shakespeare productions which are you know surrounded with stuff yes men with earpiece it's that kind of thing but it's but it's but do you want - is it your objective to get down to them well if you or I had to provide three or four players every three weeks which obviously Shakespeare had to win nobody writes 37 plays in a very short period of time unless they've got an urge which is about creativity rather than about money I mean money is nice but and Shakespeare became an extremely rich man but that up didn't sense it as if it was the obvious need in him his need was to write plays and it would have been know me well what what do any of us give to have an hour's talk with him would be extraordinary I'm interested in the idea that as you do the job that we do more you become less and less interested in well you're in your own interpretive spin you want to go to the center of the play not the center of peterhall yeah different yes sir when movie directors can do that yes they're lucky yeah I don't think we can I mean the play is the thing that's what we're there for and if there isn't that kind of real creative union with the the playwright it's never gonna work anyway yeah but they're looking back to the those early years of Stratford there were three different kinds of actors there was the old kind of actor who pretended he'd been with Irving but he was frying my load and that was the earliest rank then the middle rank of the company was the middle-aged rather the sexy people who were hoping for a contract with J Arthur rank nothing much has changed to him and they had they they'd been brought up and conditioned by JB Priestley some sent more teres Ratigan they they spoke Shakespeare frankly at the back the more you know no real projections are informed it's hammy hammy I said and hammy it was and then the third type of actor we had was it was led by the Albert Finney Brigade who said we were ah we want to speak as we speak in life and one thought God Almighty so you got to make a company out of those three segments and they didn't like each other and I I did took three years actually to get there in any sort of shape or form but what was fascinating was that they could do anything though I remember great actors I work with a lot of Paul Rogers saying to me the homecoming all right it's called the homecoming but what's all this about pause pause pause I said the author says it's silent then then we have to find out what it is what what could possibly happen during that silence and he'd say I just want to do it when I feel it but I said you're not the writer anymore you're the leading actor and you do what the writer says pause that's stuck though it was rather spoiled when dear friend Harold Pinter a couple of years ago I think in was some public demonstration rather like this so that he was fed up with pauses wanted to cut them from his plays at least for a short period anyway no I mean the the coming of Pinter into our lives as far as the RSC was concerned was hugely important because it was making less more and really seeing no I remember and they sound silly this a dish of apples in the homecoming which came with a rather yellowy red rather blushful sort of texture and Harold said to me looked at it from the stalls they said it's a wrong colour that you know and I looked and I said oh yes it should be green shouldn't have gray green he said that's right so he went so he had a bad dish of gray green apples whether we played it here or whether we played it in New York and that was the only actual color specific color that you could call out and say that is the color of the home Lord now that less is more it sounds very corny but it's no different to getting the right color on a word or on a speech or on a scene specifics in the theater really matter hmm what do you think the biggest changes you've seen over the 50 odd years more 60 odd years that you've been a director I think it's it's less star written which gives us problems because we know that they come because their stars are in it they come because the play is good as well but they might not come at all if there isn't a star mm-hmm what is a star someone who you absolutely have to see and hear and apprehend that's got more that passion somehow there's more of a passion for stars I think so yeah I thought I think the good news for us here is that there are different stars the National Theatre star yeah if you put Simon Russell Beale or Clare Higgins play that's that is a star for our audiences well that's wonderful um but I think I couldn't have better news I mean really as you know but I think the problem is in the West End where there used to be true theater stars now there are very few of them there are that there are wonderful actors who have become television stars and then you're in clover but but seriously back in the 50s you didn't need a star oh yes it was happier to have one yeah but you got away with more what without yeah and do you think there's been when you talk about the three types of actors you encountered when you set up the RSC when you first started working at Stratford I think well we're better off now yeah and so but do you fear for the future of Shakespeare yes I do actually I suppose generations of people from Shakespeare's own time onwards but I've sat and said it's not like the old days I was very aware of that on the other hand there's something so extraordinary about the potency of Shakespeare and let's not mince words I mean he is the greatest genius that the West has produced no no question in my mind and what's going to happen to that what in what respect is it in freeing in what respect does it inspire us it's got to be done well we have to get down to actually brass tacks don't we why why do I feel for Shakespeare because on the whole I think not sufficient number of people want him although a fair number do but look where we're sitting you can have Shakespeare here you have Shakespeare up the road you can have Shakespeare down the road we are theater people around this area Shakespeare's still box office oh yes oh yes but we've since since I've been here eight years we've never had a seat for anything that we've done by Shakespeare and I thought you know and they're going to do much ado in the West End with David Tennant and Catherine Tate who are exactly the kind of actor I just mentioned really good actors who happen to be TV stars yeah and they will pack it out so I think there still is there still is an audience for it but I do you do you worry that as time passes our relationship to his language will become more and more like our relationship to Chaucer well it must listen to her you're not going to win what an actor would do in 1930 all right you can hear John Gielgud doing his stuff in the 30s on a disc yeah and it doesn't sound like John Gielgud because he changed with with the society and quite right too and by the time you've got a disc that you could play and recognize and say there's Johnny he's into making a different sound and and he's much less sentimental much less attitudinizor thing somehow but then you know then the director has to say excuse me the only thing you've got is not your costume not your makeup it's your head and your heart and you've got to make the place sound as if you were inventing it at this very moment and you didn't know you were going to say it and in the meantime you've also got to say what about the verse now I had a baptism of fire in this subject there say because some years ago we were playing the Edinburgh Festival and there was a programme of things throughout row like this going on in for the public and people were buying tickets and I stood in a queue to buy a ticket and I promise you I heard this this girl say to her boyfriend oh look Peter Hall's doing a lecture about Shakespeare's verse I do want to come to that and the voice said don't be ridiculous he's don't be ridiculous he's forgotten I think obviously so so awful that he wiped it how do you see the theatre what you say do you see the theater developing what do you think the future of the theatre is going to be the building's just the theater as an institution do you think do you think we're OK for the next 50 years do you think no because I think we still are in a situation where the government doesn't understand what culture is and why it needs any hope why needs any help they don't seem to understand I mean to me it's absolutely crazy that something like this great building which you've made of a fantastic success of and don't say you happened because you know but it it's given that of course Whitehall will be saying well we can cut you a little bit but watch out next year we're in a situation where theaters make money and the money is then taken away from them and they're told to economize now that is an economic sense of any kind whatsoever that I've ever heard of if if the fact that this building is a great success needs to be understood by people I think economically I mean and that's the danger I mean when you think 30 years ago there was no Royal Court there was no Donmar there was no Almeida there was no National Theatre there was no RSC where would you go to the West End perhaps so I think the the the it's the economic problem more than anything that bothers me because I also people don't become the actors that they can be unless they work in the theater when you must admit that and if if it's if they if they simply train themselves in the theater they will not be acceptable to television it's quite hard for him find an actor who is good in the screen good in movies good in the TV and and good on the stage hmm it's quite difficult yes yeah and I think I see there is the additional issue now of how expensive it's going to be to go to the best drama schools yeah I think I think if you're faced with a twenty five thirty thousand pound loan the prospect of that by the end of your three years of drama school you're going to take a deep breath and think that Colin Lang as an actor is not necessarily the best way of having any chance of paying your loan back and I thought I have a horrible feeling that that kids who would once have gone to drama school and as it were gambled on a future in the theatre I'm not going to be able to take that gamble anymore if it also involves a whopping great and whopping great debt at the end of it and so we'll have a lot of rich kids being actors and they'll be dreadful what Department I'm totally in agreement with you know situations he's worried well I think we've got to be more militant and noisier as the the pain starts to bite yeah but it starts to pain yeah more cheerfully could you could you give us your three favorite productions from your entire career could you pick out three that I did yeah it's a horrible question but I think it's a kind of question that people like the questioner to ask well I've got an even worse answer there's too many of them just to convey say only three well on the understanding that there are lots yes just randomly free-associate well Antony and Cleopatra with turning Hopkins and Judi Dench Michael Bryant has to be there to my intense surprise because it's been the greatest adventure that I've had for some years the use of masks if the Olivier has been terribly interesting to me and something that I really want to go on with but you can't go on with less you go to space and you can do it here but not really satisfactory it's the theater that embraces the actor the one once I've done eight productions at Epidaurus in Greece over the years and they're all because of the governance of the actual building they all release things in actors which I've never seen in any other space they don't even have to say anything about it you just do it it's extraordinary there it is magical I just done the one and it not in masks and it wasn't even Greek it was it was rusting in phaedra it is it's so overwhelming is that it is overwhelming and no one knows why Dover Wilms actually when they say if you stand in the middle of the stage and just look out and speak in a clear voice you'll hear 11,000 people yes they do but nobody knows why or how no anyway this our theaters need marinating than there any time - this is a marinated theater no it's had extraordinary things done in it and it's wonderful to come and sit in and know what can go on here what look at the stage is important as the auditorium hmm that's so that's wonderful I mean I I think most of my generation have come to some sort of terms with the Olivier and it's it's a very exciting space and it's whenever there's been a real dialog between the space and the creative team doing it all the things that are not apparently comfortable in the Olivier situation dissolve I've gone away but it's a tricky I mean very early on when we moved in here I did Cherry Orchard stupidly I did it in the Olivier but I thought the Olivier can take anything we were in that Miss Phaedra and I mean the cast was ludicrous in its legality Ralph Richardson was fears left and then locked up house at the end Robert Stevens was guys thank you okay Susan Fleetwood Dorothea tootin anyway it was a fantastic Carson when we were in the rehearsal room I really thought we were on to something we had several magic days when it really was he took it up onto the Olivier stage did some dress rehearsals did some previews and we'd lost it and I to this day don't know why or how we lost it would we'd lost it the critics said we'd lost it and Ralph Richardson said to me we've lost it cocky but I mean these things happen and I have I've had some good experiences in all three spaces but the one that I like the best is this hmm so very good queue to ask whether there are any questions what about when I did Amadeus well Peter Schaffer who wrote it had a very close relationship with the with the NT from many many years way way back so the arrival of his script didn't exactly surprise us there was then the most colossal row which you'll see in one of the books I think the arnold wesker book about the wonders of his play so the John Dexter who was the extraordinary director a great director was supposed to do the play and he and Peter Schaffer proceeded to spend the summer having the most colossal rousers about the percentage percentage you know how much the director got cuz yeah as you wouldn't hardly - well as I do - directors don't get percentages like they do in movies they don't get they did they do in the commercial theatre they don't hear the call exactly yeah exactly anyway by September they'd fallen out forever so to my intense joy Peter Shaffer said to me you'll have to do it the idea of you all have to of something that's quite as exciting as that was anyway speaks for itself Paul Scofield played Salieri Felicity Kendal was milady sir Toby belch was totes out yes sir Toby belches later quite right it was a tough one very hard and in fact we left this country and went to America with it with an entirely new second act because the first act although it had some nice shivery moments didn't finally add up we thought however if it to save the day here well I can remember night after night paying to stand at the back of the circle for Amadeus I thought I'm sorry oh I can't remember how many times I've said yeah do care sorry it was silent and indeed he is playing so Toby belch yes that's so it was a little bit of an in-joke I'm very sorry so yeah any more questions yes is there any difference between directing an opera and directing a play yes for the the opera singer will do exactly what you tell him he if you say to him that could you I know you could jump up on that table and you could sing the are Ephram yeah so he jumps out the sings it comes down and says heard how didn't you say I'm sorry that was a terrible idea so sorry and he says didn't I do it well I mean the average opera singer I don't I can't perhaps the the the large large stars but your average opera singer will do absolutely anything that you suggest and it's both wonderful and dreadful the theatre actor says I can't come to this yet I've got to learn it or worse still it needs a rewrite or even worse why exactly I think in a way actors have been encouraged to be talkative I mean I love it I really do love it when they all argue because out of that argument comes something but I think there when fifty years ago it would only be the star who would say anything I would imagine certainly they were pretty silent when I came into the in the 50s I mean ladies had handbags ladies wore hats and if they were going to roll on the floor they had to be given ample notice so that's the difference anything else yes I'm gonna repeat the question just so that everybody can can hear does Peter think that it's been detrimental to the profession that so many repertory companies are disappeared disaster I mean it is it's terrible it's happening now and that it's already happening what is the purpose of it just to make sure that the theater is in the same kind of political color as everybody else I mean the money can't be that important because it's so small but if you take it away which the Arts Council are doing I've done then the thing can't go on it's it's really very sad because I don't think I'm right wrong it wrong right there think I'm wrong in saying but just at the time when we realized we'd been bankrupted practically the regional theater was in a particularly Lively state hmm that's true and I mean if you're going to have a national Santa if you're gonna have an RSC if you're gonna have a royal court you need the region's to feed those stages with talent so I think it's a disaster no no no and I don't I don't know I mean they don't apparently here you know because those people who who market beans are going to have to be cut everybody's got every count never mind about the beans yes is there a Shakespeare play you've not directed and would still like to do yes I haven't done Titus Andronicus I haven't done The Merry Wives of Windsor I haven't done Pericles do you want to do any of those not Merry Wives of Windsor yeah I'd like to but I mean I'm not in the you know I've done I think 31 or two of them anyway some of them more than once yes oh goodness what do you think I think I met you immediately after your very interesting production and thank you and praised it that's absolutely right yes I think I think that said that that will pass will pass swiftly on thank you can I just just said that the have you deliberately brought out the melancholy calm poignant side of Twelfth Night despite the fact that the comedy comes out very unforced and natural yes but I think I don't think fester is that funny I don't he's right he's dry he's musical he's a actually and we don't know where he's been he's been away for weeks we don't know whether she'll take him back Olivia or not but it is planted that he's a fool that the lady Olivia's father took much delight in but I don't think you'd say that if if he wasn't mm-hmm I mean there was some there's a whole thing about the fool anyway most of the fools who earned their living either on the street or in a bar or in a company of who act as if they were doing players but they were drinkers livers clingers cleaners on two kind of life and I think most of them my record show were priests that didn't hadn't made it haven't made the last exams for the last so although they could speak Latin and Greek and were frightfully interested in the Old Testament and could sing popular songs for money they weren't any good as gods left in and but they're mean that's why that's why it is what it is if you study the play there are lots of references to being and we we did think of making the Festa look more like a down-at-heel priest but that seemed to be saying it too loudly too harshly to smugly this is another interesting new thing am i right about this that it was just before Twelfth Night that the company lost or will Kemp walked out of the company in a huge half they lost their big star their big full star and a new fool arrived in the shape of Robert Aumann who was much more melancholic and that and that the fools that Shakespeare wrote after our men came into the company were very different from the very introspective and not very funny anyhow no so it was over we're hiring this new fool he's not very funny so could you write not funny parts for it exactly yeah but then you'd be in trouble because he'd want funny parts so he could not be not funny yeah yes no I hate concept theater and I think people directors who walk into a theater rehearsal room on the first day and say here's your design and this is your dress and and that and now they're this is the set do as I say I've done it already I've staged it already I've got my concept the only way you find the concept of a real masterpiece is to go on a journey of living with it and examining it and trying to understand it you and the actors and by the end you'll have a concept but you won't be you don't want to say it's my concept because it's not your concept it's our concept you've got time for one more question it's very difficult to answer the question because that's what I hope I do I don't really want to do a play like a play that I've done before I don't really want to I mean I like it or lump it I'm perfectly aware that this Twelfth Night which we're sitting in is totally different to the twelfth nights I've done in the past and not because I said I must be different because I went on the journey and did the play with the actors and it's not the same thing as you know doing a play in a hurry you can find it as a group if you really want to as a group and that's worth everything also I don't remember what I've done honestly but I try not to I mean that seems to me not the point I mean an actors would very get they'll get very iffy if you said they said well we saw this last month you're doing it again are you and you say yes using my same ideas hmmm I think I think there have been so many ideas that have emerged from Peter over the last 60 odd years nearly 60 years we've all been the beneficiaries it needs to be said every time Peters in the vicinity that there has been no more influential or beneficial figure in the British theatre this last half-century I and all my contemporaries owe our lives in the theatre and our jobs to him and I'm very very delighted and honoured to have been able to talk to him thank you

Channel: National Theatre

Views: 16,416

Rating: 4.9455781 out of 5

Keywords: Peter Hall, Nicholas Hytner, directing, Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, National Theatre, William Shakespeare, Rebecca Hall, The Oresteia, Artistic Director, Hamlet, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra

Id: bUZq2vDcqaU

Length: 47min 41sec (2861 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 23 2014