David Hare is very cross

About the theatre which has put on most of his greatest hits!

David Hare is very cross with the National Theatre, for all sorts of reasons. Firstly he is cross with it for not putting on enough plays. “The days in which you could go and see six plays in a week have gone, and I think that’s terrible impoverishment,” he said on Radio 4, bewailing the abandonment of the old repertory system in which a series of plays ran alongside each other for a few months. These days the theatre puts on the same number of plays, but with extended ‘solo’ runs, largely because it makes economic sense.

Secondly, he is fed up with the National for not putting on the right sort of plays. “It’s meant to present the world’s drama, and it doesn’t at the moment.” Hmm. He’s not quite right about that one, either.

You’re doing it ALL WRONG! David Hare

Thirdly, he thinks the National Theatre has become too commercial. That it risks “eroding the culture”, by putting on “semi-commercial plays angling for the West End.”

Let us have a look at what’s actually on at the National at the moment and see what it is ‘angling’ for, and why. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. There’s a family crowd pleaser, Ballet Shoes, which has been running since before Christmas, (therefore presented in tandem with other plays). Alterations, a comedy by Michael Abbensett exploring 1970’s London from the viewpoint of the Guyanese community and Windrush generation, opens next week.

Dear England, by James Graham, a smash hit about Gareth Southgate’s management of the England football team, is back by popular demand. When it opened in 2023 this production single-handedly changed the audience in the Olivier Theatre (basically middle aged couples were replaced by enthusiastic boys and young men in full kit). Yes, it has just had a very successful West End run; but who knew that a play portraying Harry Kane in the mode of contemporary dance would be commercially successful?

If that isn’t enough, future excitements in 2025 include Stephen Sondheim’s final musical Here We Are, Inter Alia by Suzie Miller (who wrote global smash Prima Facie), starring Rosamund Pike - and The Land of the Living, by David Lan, starring Juliet Stevenson.

All new plays at the National Theatre in 2025…just not ones by David Hare

All in all, in the immediate future at the National Theatre there are an astonishing sixteen productions, including one with a cast of 100 taking place at The Fire Station in Sunderland and one (Boys from the Blackstuff) undertaking a twenty-venue tour, including theatres in Wales and Scotland. Meanwhile, Stephen Daldry’s hit production of JB Priestley’s classic An Inspector Calls is on an eighteen-venue tour, including visits to both Wimbledon Theatre and the New Theatre Hull. So audiences in both my childhood home and my university home will have the pleasure of experiencing this wonderful play, in a peerless production.

What is the matter with David Hare, who has been associate director at the National and who has enjoyed huge acclaim for plays from Pravda to Skylight by way of Racing Demon, to mention just three works out of SIXTEEN, (as my fellow Substacker Nancy Durrant has reminded me) memorably produced by the National?

Yes, the National has always had an eye for commercial transfers – and what a useful fiscal string to its bow that has been. That War Horse is still trundling round the nations and regions, packing the audiences in and making lots of money, is surely a good thing. Again, hard to see how a puppet show with a horse and a goose would be a commercial smash but here’s to the visionaries who spotted that and delivered a memorable event. What’s wrong with plays headed by stars turning up at the West End, anyway? I remember seeing a production of Plenty by, er, David Hare, starring Cate Blanchett in the West End.

And who can afford to go and see a different show at the theatre every night of the week? Ticket prices at the National are a lot less heady than those in the West End, but they are still quite punchy.

Also, audiences have become used to rather spectacular staging at the National Theatre. This is all very well, but once you have devised a show with amazing special effects, including a train coming out of the stage at you (in The Permanent Way, by, er, David Hare), it becomes quite tricky to replace it every other night with something else. It is much more economically prudent to put one show on and run it for a couple of weeks. Interestingly enough, in 2019 The Permanent Way was staged at the Vaults Theatre in a site specific production beneath the tracks of Waterloo Station. So, not much sign of it being in repertory, there.

It is Indhu Rubasingham’s first season as Artistic Director of the National Theatre, and she is inheriting some of her predecessor Rufus Norris’ hits as well as forging ahead with her own portfolio. It is a season which includes classics, new shows, musicals and puppetry, from voices right across British society. It is remarkable in its breadth and depth, and it also physically traverses the whole of the United Kingdom as well as visiting Ireland. That is quite before we mention the cinematic releases, the schools’ tours and all the other elements delivered by the institution.

What this season does not include, however, is any play by David Hare. Could this possibly be at the heart of all this crossness?