Diaries

"This is Peter Hall’s day-by-day account of what it was like to run the National Theatre through the 1970s. It’s a momentous decade, because first of all he has to take over the National Theatre from Laurence Olivier, which involved a good deal of internal politicking. There was a year when Olivier was still the director and Hall was the incomer, so they had to work in tandem, which must have been like treading on hot coals. Then came the problems of moving into the new building in 1976 at a time when there were strikes and delays, the country was going through one of its periodic economic declines, and the mood was anti the National Theatre. And then having got inside the new building, there was a problem just keeping the productions coming and enticing an audience. What the book makes very clear are the strains and stresses of running a huge organisation. Today, I think it might be a little easier for the director of the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, because the National Theatre is an established fact. Hall’s job was to make it an established fact. The book has that compulsiveness that all good diaries have where you get a day-by-day, blow-by-blow account. And you sense that Hall is being driven, at times, to a state of nervous breakdown. He keeps saying, ‘Why do I do this? Why don’t I just chuck it?’ Just to pick out one entry: Monday, March 10th 1975, before they’d moved into the new building. ‘Who wants a National Theatre at this point? The government don’t, because they have insufficient money for all the claims upon them. The Arts Council don’t, because they have not included us for extra amounts in their budgets. The media don’t want us because it is very good news in this time of austerity and increasing puritanism that a £40 million temple of fun is a mistake and an aberration.’ Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I was there at the time and I remember the hatred the National Theatre engendered among the theatre profession at large. Sections of the media waged a constant campaign against it. Then it opens in 1976 bit-by-bit, and then suddenly we think, ‘Oh, it’s rather nice to have a National Theatre.’ And of course, the public takes to it almost immediately, and by the end of the 70s it has become established. So the book does build towards, if not a happy ending exactly, then certainly something positive. And of course the book is also riveting on the level of personal relationships, gossip, individuals. I’m not saying it’s only gossip, but the book shows what it must be like to sit in that office on the Southbank and run this complex organisation and define what a national theatre is for. It’s a dangerous book, this. If I pick it up at an idle moment at 3 o’clock in the afternoon when I’m at home, I then find at 4 o’clock I’m still reading it, because I can’t stop. I think it’s one of the great books about the theatre and anyone who wants to go into the theatre as a director or actor or administrator should read this book, because it just tells you it’s not going to be easy. April 11, 2011. Updated: September 10, 2022 Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]"